


let slip the dogs of war

by badbrains



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gangsters, BAMF Derek Hale, BAMF Stiles, Drug Addiction, Drug trafficking, Full Shift Werewolves, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Minor Character Death, POV Alternating, Pretty much everyone is OOC, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, could be considered enemies to lovers i suppose, past steter and temporary stackson so be warned, this is my emotional support self indulgence fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:35:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 82,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27873150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badbrains/pseuds/badbrains
Summary: He stares at himself in the mirror. His cheeks are faintly blotchy, flush sparsely coloring down his neck. His eyes look glassy and half-crazed. “Get it the fuck together,” he growls lowly to his reflection. “You loseeverything. Get fucking used to it.”He can’t stop thinking about it. How Derek looked at him, said his name reverently rather than disdainfully.He sits on the shower floor, shivering even though the spray is far too hot. He keeps replaying the words over and over -sometimes the person someone shows us and the person we choose to see are two different people.For the first time, Stiles seriously takes a moment to consider that perhaps he has never known Derek Hale at all.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 78
Kudos: 140





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> 3/6/21 - finally changed the goddamn summary LMAO
> 
> hey guys, i am back !! 
> 
> ok so, i posted this fic a hot minute ago and then took it down along with my other works because i was overwhelmed and felt like my content was not on the level i wanted it to be. i think i am at a place where i have a better idea of what i want this fic to be and where i would like it to go, so i have decided to put it up again after doing some editing and rethinking the plot, but a lot of it is still the same. i probably will not have a steady update schedule just because, life, but i should be better about it than i was. i have the end chapter count sitting at 10, but i feel like i may end up surpassing that but who knows. 
> 
> additional disclaimers and warnings: this is going to be very much slow burn and there will be smut and whatnot between characters that are not sterek on the way to sterek. i apologize if that if not your jam. there is past steter mentioned in past tense. stiles was underage at this time, but i did not want to tag this fic as underage since it is mentioned briefly in the first act and then alluded to in passing from then on. also, k*te and the terrible things she did will be mentioned, but also in past tense and never recalled graphically, which is why i did not tag noncon. the way stiles talks about / handles his own and others' trauma and problems in this fic is, in short, very much asshole-ish. this is to add to the realism of the environment, so just a heads up that, like, everyone is kinda mean to each other haha. for certain chapters with certain possible warnings, i will disclose them in the end notes for you to look over just in case. 
> 
> i have never read _julius caesar_ i am just exploiting it for my own personal gain pls do not come for me. also i have no beta reader bc i would never subject someone to the bare bones of my work, i don't support capital punishment. so if you see a typo uhhh no you don't <3
> 
> anywho i will stop talking now (:

**Prologue - Lynchpin**

“I love the name of honour more than I fear death.”

William Shakespeare, _Julius Caesar_

Stiles was freshly seventeen, but he hadn't been a child in a long time.

His mother’s diagnosis when he was a kid put a time clock on his childhood, a stopwatch that ceased its incessant ticking after eight months. He gave up weekends with friends to adjust his mother’s hospital blanket and hold her hand. He stopped showing up to band practice in favor of spoon feeding her cups of bright red gelatin and soups made of little more than broth and noodles. He softly read her favorite works aloud; her beat-down copy of _Julius Caesar_ that cracked at the spine and lilted at the pages was his favorite. Stiles relinquished his bed, opting to curl up in the creaky chair in the corner of her room, clicking through the same three channels while her heart monitor reminded him that she was _alive,_ but she wasn’t _living_.

It wasn’t long until she forgot him. Even quicker were the fits of screaming, her panicked eyes accusatory, words lashing through his skin while she insisted that he was going to kill her. He’d wanted to, then. He wanted her to die, if only so it would finally be over. He could scarcely look at her due to the heavy weight of guilt that bore down on his stomach with those thoughts.

He remembers the first time he turned the small orange bottle over and over in his hands. His birthday passed with no impressive celebration. He didn’t feel like celebrating. He didn’t _feel_ at all. He just wanted to grasp at something other than numbness or aching, bone-deep sadness that weighed down his steps. His mother was in pain, constant, chronic. She needed her medication, but she was going to die. She wouldn’t remember if any were missing. He had this itching feeling, pressing beneath his skin, something insisting that he would need them, that they would be worth having. Worth stealing for. 

Stiles laid in bed and stared at the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling and let it overtake him. The quiet. No monitors beeping, none of his mother’s strained breathing while she slept. Just him. And his dad, whenever he was home. It made him feel guilty, but the only time he felt okay was when he was alone. He was relieved to know he could feel anything at all, other than the bitterness. He stored the pills in a box under his bed. He felt badly, like he was taking something he had no business fooling with. He was careful about it, though - swiping two here and there, one lone pill every odd number of days. He never took enough to be noticeable. She never said anything, and he never confessed. 

His father held tight to whiskey like a lifeline, even far before her final days. His breath reeked and his posture shrunk. Stiles’ lungs felt tight, heart heavy, with the knowledge that the woman who cultivated his spark, who turned three people into a family, who forged bonds like blades that could cut deeper than any sword, would ultimately be the one to send it crashing down, debris in the Pacific, laid to waste.

Claudia Stilinski died on a cold autumn afternoon, and when her casket sank into the ground it dragged Stiles along with it. There’s pieces of him buried beneath her tombstone in Beacon Hills’ Cemetery, pieces that fit neatly into the cracks in his bones. Pieces of himself that he’ll never get back. Doesn’t want back. The holes trickle bone marrow into his blood, he’s never stopped drowning. Those pieces always belonged to his mother, it’s best that she keeps hold of them.

His father floundered, position as deputy decaying alongside the enamel of his teeth. Stiles learned to cook from a stained recipe book buried in a box of his mother’s things. He learned what his father could and couldn’t have – what made his heart hurt and what made it hurt less. He learned how to do laundry – separate them by colors and create lone piles of whites, allow linens to have their own wash and that bleach was not meant to be used liberally. He learned that you can use a scrub bush for the toilet bowl and the bathtub. He learned how to scrape the dirt from the tile grout and iron his father’s uniform. Stiles knew that the man’s sickness came from grief - if Stiles could have smothered his own reality with a pillow crafted from liquor, he would have.

He started sneaking glances at his father’s case files when he was fourteen. When the bottles of whiskey were fewer, but still a household staple. He made connections on his own, left typed out notes on his father’s desk, slipped them into his manila folders stamped _CONFIDENTIAL_ so they’d travel with him to the station. Before long, though, Stiles’ research methods did not work as smoothly, or as often.

When he’d hit the streets, he thought he’d have a harder time adapting. He knew nothing of the world of criminality. He assimilated frighteningly well. He’d been diagnosed with ADHD, he stockpiled the pink capsules, dumped them into a sealable bag under his bed before visiting the clinic for refills on the date printed on the bottle. He exchanged pills for intel or sometimes simply traded them for cash, gave up minor police resources for names, housed sealed bags of cheap drugs in the pockets of his jacket for street rats lying low. When adderall wasn’t enough for them, he mimicked his mother’s symptoms of acute pain at the local clinic, tricked the doctors into prescribing him low doses of oxycontin.

Before long, he got bigger and bigger; sought out, popular. People dropped his name to crooks looking for an in, beggars seeking information, low-life teens who needed one person they could trust.

Without his mother, he’d learned to harness his magic on his own. His fingertips burst with licks of fire, palms smoldering with flickers of flame. It wasn’t long before the streets knew not to fuck with him. He disciplined himself, taught the buzzing beneath his skin to jolt others with his touch, electrify nerve endings and render assailants ground-level with tremors. He found a leather-bound book of runes under his father’s bed on what used to be his mother’s side. He studied them diligently, practiced tracing them for hours until he could make them work. He utilized simple ones for healing and protection before working his way up. He decreased his use of opioids, seeing firsthand how they dimmed his spark. It hurt, he sweated and shook, but he slowly acclimated. Soon, he had his house encased in wards, fending off burnouts and creatures of the night. He was powerful in his own right, and people feared him. 

Over careful years, he wasn’t Stiles, he was _LP_ – lynchpin. He ran underground operations – filtered dirty cops, traded power like currency to get inside information. His father got elected as sheriff, crowned one of the most successful in the position in the last thirty years. _Stiles_ did that. Stiles hit the streets, fraternized with gutter rats, peddled prescription drugs like they were fucking candy, burned lesser men alive for their wrongdoings – this was all orchestrated by _Stiles_ , whose father turned a blind eye in favor of shaking hands and garnering praise. 

Stiles was freshly seventeen when he got the offer.

Stiles had made quite the name for himself, and people noticed.

All Stiles knew about Peter Hale was that burnouts called him _Alpha_ and he was the figurehead of The Pack - one of the bloodiest gangs in the city. Word on the street had been that he was putting feelers out for a spark, mostly for defensive strategizing, but ultimately desired to be weaponized to their full potential.

When he told his father, the man's posture had been pathetically slumped over on the lumpy couch in the living room. It was an atrocious and ugly thing; viciously uncomfortable and patterned obnoxiously floral. But his mother had loved it, so it stayed.

“They need someone like me,” Stiles said confidently, shoulders back to disguise how badly he wanted to crumble. When the man remained silent, Stiles cleared his throat and added, “I think it might be a good thing for me. More structured than the streets."

The lines of the man’s face read helpless, but Stiles knew his place. He knew what it was, _how_ it was. Stiles was far from irreplaceable, so he squared his shoulders and accepted that he was a pawn. That's how it works. It's all just business, impersonal, transactional. His father had utilized him before - he’d turned a blind eye while Stiles became acquainted with the street rats, assimilated with them, turned into one of them. He never asked how Stiles got information, but he knew his father wasn't so dense as to be completely clueless to his tactics. This was as good an opportunity for his father as it was for Stiles. 

He knows that he looks like her, has a sharp tongue like her, has a glowing spark beneath his fingertips like her. To his father, he embodies loss, heartache, grief, suffering. Stiles _got_ it, okay. He knew how hard it was for his father to look at him, how it was even harder for the man to love him. His father needed a connection, but more importantly he needed Stiles _gone_. Stiles was worth something to The Pack where he was worth nothing here without his mother. Understanding it, though, hadn't quelled the blank stare he aimed out the window on the drive to The Den.

The man called _Alpha_ stepped out and shook his father's hand, flanked by two wolves with startlingly human eyes. Werewolves. Stiles had never seen a full shift ‘wolf in person. During his stint on the streets, he’d seen a few capable of the beta shift, but nothing more. The man offered his father a drink and didn't look at Stiles once. He was dressed head to toe in an undoubtedly expensive three-piece suit, waistcoat straining over an abdomen corded with muscle, golden watch-chain glinting haughtily in the summer sun. Stiles kept pace, marched behind them, chin up like he belonged there. They clinked heavy crystal glasses and sipped scotch in front of him. 

The man whistled, long and low, and the ‘wolves slinked off elsewhere. The two talked about infrastructure and connections and what The Pack needed from the department as well as what they could offer in return. There were exchanged whispers of _immunity_ and _blanket protection._ They chatted like old friends, laughing and joking, and when his father stood to leave, he clapped the man on the shoulder and offered Stiles a glance.

He didn't even properly tell him goodbye.

In the future, if someone were to map out Stiles' life and trace back to the exact moment that he'd hardened - the precise second where his veins froze over and his heart pulsed through the icy layer that encased it - it would have been then.

After closing the door behind his father, _Alpha_ looked at him finally. He trained red eyes on Stiles, appraising him, the blazing irises blown black with interest. Stiles stood straight with his shoulders back while the man raked his eyes slowly from his toes up to his head. When he looked him in the eye, Stiles raised his eyebrows, undaunted. 

"Well," he purred around a full-fledged smirk, "aren't you just the prettiest little thing."

He introduced himself as Peter before questioning Stiles on the extent of his power. He told Stiles how he’d heard talk around the town of a preternatural kid called _LP_ who left ashes in his wake. Peter made him demonstrate a few basic maneuvers, draw a couple of different runes, radiating a crazed sort of delight as he did so.

“So, am I everything you thought I’d be and more?” Peter inquires with a manic smile, all fang.

Stiles eyes him coolly, doesn’t let the presence of authority force him to cower. “I was under the impression you wanted a spark, not a sycophant.”

He barks a laugh, it’s a loud and unsettling thing. “I think you are going to fare just fine here.”

He then began walking, snapping his fingers to summon Stiles beside him, indicating an unspoken order to follow. As he trailed a step behind Peter, the man explained to him exactly what initiation would entail, spoke of a man named Deaton who could help him grow stronger. He let Stiles know that his training partner would be his nephew, who was new on the scene due to his mother's death. Peter gave Stiles a crash course of sorts into his sister’s history, how she’d exchanged favors to leave the life of crime behind after meeting her husband. She’d evaded an arranged marriage that would have created an alliance with a rival in favor of marrying the man she loved. Peter scoffed as he told this to Stiles, as if his sister were idiotic. Perhaps she was.

"Talia was always soft," he spat out bitterly, waving a hand. "She sheltered those children, I always told her such. She said she had no place in this life, that’s why she had to leave." He'd picked an invisible piece of lint from the shoulder of his suit jacket, smoothing it over before pinning Stiles with a sharp smile. "You can't just _leave_ a life like this. I mean, look at my sweet sister now. She's got the gravestone to prove it."

He nodded along dutifully, maintaining eye contact. Peter just repainted his smirk and turned forward once again. Stiles' role was intended to be almost strictly defensive, at least for the time being. Peter was undeniably dangerous; he maintained an aura of finality that inspired fear. Stiles did not fear death, though. He’s been dead since his mother became food for worms. He was here seeking a better name for himself. He wanted power.

When they entered the training room, Peter closed the heavy doors behind them. It felt like he’d closed the lid to Stiles’ casket.


	2. act i

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i use the term spark and mage and stuff interchangeably because, tbh, i do not know the difference. also, stiles has a wide range of powers because i am just super lazy. i know next to nothing about drugs or gangs, so any information in this fic is the product of the barest minimum of google searches. i don't say it explicitly, but stiles is twenty-two and derek is twenty-eight. i say fuck a lot in this fic so be aware of that. i am very liberal with the swearing in this one lmao
> 
> not beta read so if you see a typo please call the tip hotline and report it for trespassing, i will prosecute to the highest degree >:(
> 
> warnings for this chapter in the end notes. please don't hate me too much (:

**Act I – Inferno**

“The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones.”

Stiles isn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

His mouth twists into a grin and his knuckles ache as they land another hit on the body slumped in front of him. His mind catches fire and his neurons ignite with the thrill of it. His heart sparks dangerously and his skin feels like it glows beneath the splatter of blood. He was _made_ for this and _goddamn_ if that thought alone doesn’t trickle pleasure down his spine. 

While the man groans and attempts to double over despite the ropes restraining him, Stiles stretches his fingers in and out, inspecting them as though bored. He wears a thick ring on each finger for these occasions, they just cut so prettily into pliant skin. There’s blood splattered over his favorite, a sterling silver wolf’s head with rubies for eyes. He rubs it clean on his pant leg. For theatrics, he clicks his tongue in solemn disapproval and lightly traces a rune beneath the knobs of his knuckles, smiling as the ache dulls and then disappears.

"You know, you were so _chatty_ at the bar," he tuts. "Now you can't even spare me a glance?" 

Stiles brings his newly healed hand up to grip tightly at the man's chin, relishing in the feel of the bones grinding beneath his fingertips. The target grits his teeth against the pain and Stiles feels his jaw shift deliciously under his touch. Stiles paints on a pout, jutting out his lower lip. He rubs his thumb softly across the man's cheek. He never bothers to learn names, it’s futile considering he wouldn’t know it for long. He’d rather see it for the first time on their gravestone.

"You just went _on and on_ about how you were going to fuck my pretty little mouth," he licks his tongue slowly over his lips to drive the point home. "How you wanted to see tears stream down my baby face while I begged for it."

He hears Derek clear his throat with a stern, "Stiles."

He rolls his eyes. "I'm just having a little fun, Sourwolf." He smirks as he imagines the older man scowling at the nickname. "After all, no one likes a tease."

With that he repaints the wolf red over the man's cheekbone, the sound of his head thudding against the brick tinkling like a symphony in Stiles' ears. He throws his head back, cackling as he holds a hand to the side, summoning the handle of his bat into his open palm. It thuds lightly when it makes impact and Stiles feels a shiver run through his body when he curls his fingers around it. The man groans, blinking hard. Stiles pivots delightedly on his heel and looks at Boyd, who's leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest, face stoic.

"What are we thinking, Herc?" He swings the bat in a semi-circle, raising his other hand palm-up to catch the end of it when it arcs downward. He bounces it idly while he clicks his tongue like he's thinking. "Should I start with his head? Bash his skull in?"

Boyd continues to stare at him, stone-faced. Stiles slides his eyes over to Erica, who's straddling the other chair. She grins lazily and blows a hot pink bubble with her gum, darts her tongue out to deflate it, then tucks it between her back teeth. Her saliva smacks wetly as she chews for a moment, considering. Her red lips look almost as if they’re glowing in the dim light, eyes glinting when they stretch into a sharp smile. "I think you should start from the bottom and work your way up."

Stiles lets the end of the bat fall back to his other side so he can cheerfully snap his fingers at her. "I like the way you think."

He swivels back to face the man who is now glaring at him, eyes brimming with anger.

Stiles hums. "Now _that's_ what I like to see." He sets the bat gently at his feet before leaning forward, bracketing the man with his arms. He slides his hands to grip his biceps. The man thrashes violently and Stiles laughs. He holds eye contact while he sinks slowly down to a crouch, his hands dragging leisurely down the man’s sides. When they reach his knees, Stiles spreads them open, nosing up the seam of his pant leg. 

"Isn't this what you wanted," Stiles murmurs, batting his lashes while his hands smooth up and down the man's thighs, "me on my knees for you?"

The man hisses when Stiles snaps his teeth playfully at the stitching where the denim meets between his legs. He works his way back up so his mouth is panting hot by the man's ear, he huffs a breathy moan. "I can't _wait_ to hear you scream for me."

He holds an arm out, the bat meets his hand a second later. He stands abruptly, bites his lip against a smile, and brings the wood down against the man's kneecap. 

His head smacks the wall as he cries for mercy. Stiles shushes him sweetly, leaning his weight against the bat like a cane. "It's okay, it's okay. That wasn't so bad, was it?" Stiles coos, running a hand up and down the man’s arm comfortingly as he traces a rune over the shattered bone, humming with satisfaction as he hears the pieces _snick_ back into place.

"You didn't _mean_ to cheat us out of our money, did you?" Stiles runs his fingers through the man's hair, ruffling it as he shakes his head fervently, whimpering broken pleas. “You were only missing half a million; easy mistake. I'm sure this was all a _huge_ misunderstanding, wasn’t it? I can imagine you’re _very_ sorry."

The man blinks at him with wet eyes, nodding, releasing a litany of _I swear I have no clue what you’re talking about I swear_ on my life _it's a misunderstanding_. 

Stiles nods at him placatingly, lower lip jutted out. “On your life, huh?” He cups the man's cheek, scratching his fingertips against the gritty stubble there. Stiles sighs sadly, shaking his head. "Unfortunately, I'm not in the mood to judge the Self-Pity Olympics." Stiles brings the palm away from his face only to return it once it's been curled into a fist. He smirks when he feels a crack.

He shakes his hand out. "In any case, Donnie Darko back there would win." He throws a wink over his shoulder at Derek, who huffs and stares pointedly at the wall as if he couldn't care less about what Stiles is doing, which is probably true. He watches as Derek uncrosses his arms and raises his wrist, pulling his cuff to unveil a watch that could have purchased a house. Perhaps three houses. "Ten minutes," he barks before returning his arms to their previous position. Stiles allows himself a second to drink in how the sleeves of Derek's suit jacket pull taut over his biceps. He whines dramatically, turning his head back to the issue at hand.

He blows his lips out, feigning exasperation. "I'm so sorry. I can usually last much, _much_ longer than ten minutes." With a wink, he slams his palms flat into the man’s chest, laughing as he goes up in flames.

x

Stiles always gets jittery after a kill. His body pulsing with adrenaline, practically vibrating with unhinged energy. Peter used to smile his shark smile and call him _feral_ when he got like this. Back when he was first initiated, the older man would take him straight to bed after a hit. Stiles would twitch and shake and Peter's hands would roam and squeeze. They'd roll around in Peter's silk sheets and Stiles would writhe and moan while Peter would shift and growl, all claws and fangs and blazing eyes.

He would demand that Stiles tell him all of the details; what weapons he used, how he used them, if he burned them, how they screamed, if they cried. Peter would swallow his words with scalding lips, trail fire down Stiles’ throat with his open mouth, begging to hear it all. He’d scrape his fangs across Stiles’ thighs, hips, shoulders, the Hale Crest triskelion between his collarbones; lap up the flakes of blood with a scorching tongue, pant hot air across ivory skin. Stiles’ back would arch, coaxed upward by pinpricked claws seeking relief within the divots of his spine. Stiles would sink his fingertips into Peter’s hips and bite the flesh of his shoulder; Peter would pull his hair to bare his throat and grip handfuls of his ass to move him faster. Occasionally, Stiles would come so hard flames erupted from the hands he had fisted in the sheets. The sex was _electric_.

He and Peter haven't fucked since before he was nineteen. Peter likes jailbait, the thrill of obtaining and maintaining what he can’t have. Stiles can legally purchase his own alcohol and more often than not reeks of tobacco; he has long since diverged from the teenage fantasy. He was bitter, at first. He’d gotten too old for Peter's refined palate and, in total transparency, it had made him _angry._ He’d burned so many things with his touch those first few weeks after, fingertips sparking every time he laid eyes on the man.

At the time, he'd truly believed, in the darkest corners of his heart, that he loved Peter. He’d gotten so used to everyone leaving him behind, forgetting him. But Peter had been so attentive, almost obsessive in his initial fascination. Stiles would stare at the ceiling while Peter breathed evenly next to him and dream of a future; Peter and him against the world. How fucking _pathetic_. He was young and malleable. Now, Stiles isn’t even _mildly_ interested in Peter, not in the slightest. He could keel over laughing at the mere thought. But, he'd had _power_. He'd lay sweaty and boneless in Peter's bed - still decorated with splatters of crimson around his hands and come around his thighs, eyes unfocused, head a little manic - and he'd known in his bones that Peter would kill for him, do _anything_ for him, if only he were to ask. He supposes it's worryingly easy, at an impressionable age like that, to get attached. Stiles mistook his love of power as love for Peter. The only contrast between then and now is that now Stiles is old enough to know the difference. He guesses that's why Peter likes them young; it makes it easier to blur those lines.

It's not that simple now. He knows without any uncertainty that he is valuable to Peter; it is far too difficult to acquire sparks and train them as thoroughly as Stiles had been. He’d been an experiment of sorts; Peter had used him to see how far he could shove before something snapped. He pushed and Stiles pulled, he snapped his fingers and Stiles fell into step, he said _jump_ and Stiles asked _how high_. Stiles is still the only spark in The Pack after Deaton’s retirement, so he'd have to train any new inductees, and he just doesn't have the time. Peter almost exclusively utilizes Stiles and a handful of the earlier recruits to take care of high priority hits. Peter trusts them, and them only, that in itself is beyond powerful in an environment like theirs.

The streets call Stiles Inferno; he’s hell incarnate. Erica has the sex appeal to make Hugh Hefner roll in his grave and the looks to prove it; there is little on this earth more powerful a weapon than a woman’s sexuality. They call her Widow, every man seen leaving with her is never heard from again. When asked she’d primly studied her nails; _it’s a coincidence, really_. Isaac is on standby, usually in the getaway car a block or two out from their location. He mainly takes care of the clean-up; he bleaches the blood and sterilizes the weaponry. They call him Reaper; he shoots to kill. When things go awry, as they sometimes do, Isaac diffuses the situation - which is to say he buries a bullet beneath a cranium before they can get information. It happens. Boyd does a lot of the heavy lifting; they call him Hercules. He does the knocking out, the tying up, the stringing about. When Stiles renders a hit unconscious, Boyd's the one who gets them to the intended location, bound up and ready to go. Stiles isn't sure - even after all these years - exactly what Derek is there for. Peter sometimes uses Derek to seduce, uses him for background reconnaissance, uses him for internal relations - Derek doesn’t really _have_ a job, he does it all. Stiles recalls one of their first missions when he'd brought it up: _you know, Derek, if I didn't know any better I'd say you're just here to look pretty - but that's my job_. They call him Cardinal for his appeal to others’ lust. Stiles is pretty sure Peter came up with that one. Derek doesn't use codenames though, he thinks they are childish. Stiles calls him Sourwolf simply because it irritates him.

Leaving the warehouse, Stiles feels too big for his own skin. Every swing of his bat had increased the size of his bones until they felt as though they were desperate to escape the confines of his flesh. His body is still thrumming with the aftermath of using magic, his nerve endings buzzing from the thrill of it.

Erica walks a little unevenly beside him, her high-heeled shoes echoing on the asphalt. Derek and Boyd are behind them talking quietly with each other. She staggers a little, leaning her body into Stiles’ side, giving him some of her weight while they continue forward.

“You didn’t make much of a mess this time,” she offers conversationally, with the same casual intonation as _hey it’s kinda dark out._

Stiles shrugs and smirks. “I figured Isaac could use an off day.”

Erica swats his shoulder, feigning admonishment. “Careful. You’ll spoil him.”

Stiles hums while Erica laughs lightly at her own joke. She’s got red fishnets on under a black latex dress that reflects the orange glow of the streetlamps like rainwater does the moon. Their mission tonight was at The Nemeton; one of Peter’s supernatural-friendly clubs. Peter had Erica cage dancing, scoping the floor while Stiles flirted with their hit. Stiles is dressed up in a simple black shirt tucked beneath the waist of form-fitting dress slacks. Boyd was at the door tonight, so he’s outfitted in a sleek button-down tucked neatly into dark, straight-legged pants. Derek, ever the shining star, is dressed in a crisp black three-piece. Peter had him playing guard dog tonight, seated at the bar near Stiles to dazzle and distract the bystanders, keep them off Stiles’ scent while he worked his magic.

He and Derek have always had a game of cat-and-mouse between them, skirting around each other _just so_ in the near five years they’ve known one another. Stiles had been freshly seventeen during initiation, Derek twenty-three. That’s back when Stiles trailed Peter like a lost puppy, spoke to him – of him – like he was the only man Stiles knew. Which was more or less true at the time, depending on how you looked at it.

Stiles and Derek were each other’s initiation partners. In the beginning, Stiles was trained primarily to be on the defensive, until Peter realized through Deaton that Stiles was worth so much more than being the last resort. Derek, naturally, treated Stiles like a pest. Going unnecessarily hard on him in training, spitting biting slights about his father, pinning him to walls to prove he had the upper hand. That’s back when Stiles would tread lightly, still feeling like a street rat who didn’t quite belong in their world. But, one day, Derek had pinned him to the wall and felt as though he had the freedom to speak about Claudia Stilinski. Stiles had lifted his hands to fasten them around the man’s wrists and promptly sent him to his knees with an electric current. He’d reached bony fingers to grip the hair at Derek’s nape and jerk his head back, trailing them first over his open throat to humiliate his werewolf sensibilities. He’d crouched down, felt Derek’s body jolting with the leftover tremors, and said, “Speak of my mother again, and I’ll fucking bury you beside the rest of the Hales.”

After that, Derek and Stiles had regarded one another with a somewhat careful respect. Stiles acknowledged that Derek could easily kill anyone if he so wished and Derek acknowledged that Stiles gave as good as he got, if not better. As Stiles grew stronger, showed up day after day thrumming with power, he and Derek developed an air of sexual tension that cracked like a whip and stung like one too.

Whenever it was Derek’s turn to handle a hit, Stiles would drink him in hungrily in the aftermath. Derek was messy, messier than Stiles; the ‘wolf would regularly strip to his undershirt, brass knuckles reflecting dangerously over tattooed fingers reading _HALE PACK_ , muscled forearms flexing fluidly as he clenched his fists. Derek was relentless, landing blows long after the body had slumped in defeat. Sometimes, he would kill in his full shift. Snarl and growl and tear their target to bloody pieces of flesh and bone. Stiles’ gaze would fall half-lidded as it raked over him, skin itching with the desire to lick the splatters of blood from his shoulders, neck, face. He’d entertain fantasies of laving his tongue over the brass knuckles, sucking them clean while they still rested on Derek’s hands.

Derek’s chest would heave, drunk off the kill, and he’d bare his teeth – all fang – eyes blazing blue like the simmering tip of a violent flame. Stiles bit his lips against thoughts of the man’s claws sinking into the soft skin of his thighs, Derek’s fangs scraping red lines across his chest while the scent of blood hung thick in the air – made them dizzy with it. In those moments, he’d do anything to give Derek exactly what he wanted.

It was far from one-sided.

Derek’s eyes would track him while he buzzed from the high of a hit, hazy and unfocused while they studied Stiles coming unglued. He’d catch the man’s pale gaze snapping up from the seat of Stiles' pants whenever Stiles addressed him; smirking unashamed.He’d trace his tongue around his open mouth when Stiles’ hands created flames, sink his fangs into his lower lip when Stiles employed runes. His eyeline dutifully followed every swing and arc of Stiles’ bat, drinking in his swift movements with a type of primal hunger that made Stiles’ bone marrow bubble with the heat.

They never did anything about it, though.

As far as Derek had first been concerned, Stiles was an underage kid drunk on power who served as Peter’s obedient plaything. Peter trained him, Peter weaponized him, and then Peter used him. Wash, rinse, repeat. Even after Stiles aged out of Peter’s carnal preference – Stiles still answered to Peter. In the end, they _all_ answered to Peter. Sure, Stiles was probably a hot piece of ass, rivaled only by Erica, especially around a place as perpetually drab as The Den. But being fuckable didn’t mean you were desirable, so Derek never pushed and Stiles didn’t press…too often.

“I am _so_ going to get _fucked_ tonight,” Stiles punctuates it with a twirl of his bat. Erica cackles, craning her neck to look back at the men behind them.

“ _Boyd_ is going to get fucked tonight,” she purrs, giving a low, appreciative whistle. Stiles hums back in delight, imagining Boyd’s face twisted uncomfortably with fond eyes. Derek remains silent, but Stiles doesn’t let it eat at him anymore, doesn’t torture himself with what he can’t have. At least not tonight.

He gnaws his lip, thinking wolfishly about what he could get away with talking Jackson into this evening. Jackson is head of The Pack’s legal team; he finds the loopholes and provides the defense. He has his work cut out for him, but Peter pays him a pretty penny, so there are no complaints ever uttered from the man’s mouth. To Stiles’ great, _great_ pleasure, Jackson is beautiful. Hot like burning. He has full lips, light eyes, complete with an _I am better than you and I know it_ smirk. To top it all off, they somewhat despise each other; they have since they first met three years ago. Their hate sex could move mountains, transport a person inter-dimensionally. Jackson is all rough hands and biting kisses and degrading dirty talk. In bed, Jackson is explosive. Stiles feels his gaze go a little unfocused, his step falters slightly, as he imagines what they could do tonight. Maybe Jackson will push his face into the pillows. Pull Stiles’ forearms back and rock into him while his hands still smell like ash and his brain still buzzes with after-death mania.

Boyd clears his throat pointedly and groans a quiet, “ _Stiles_.”

Stiles blinks back into the present, having half a mind to feel slightly guilty at the arousal that is surely wafting off of him in suffocating waves. He aims as sheepish a smile as he can muster with a wink back at the man. “Sorry, guys. I’m very excited.”

Derek huffs and rolls his eyes but says nothing, Erica just grins evilly at him. Stiles faces forward again and shakes his head to clear it, he’ll save the fantasies for when he and Jackson are actually in the same room.

They slow to a stop at the curb, now all they have to do is wait for Isaac to finish and pick them up. Erica saunters over to a lamppost and hangs lazily off of it. Boyd steps to stand beside her. Derek leans against an old, curved piece of chain-link fence that has a faded _NO TRESPASSING_ sign hanging limply from it. Stiles sinks down on the curb, stretching his legs and bending them slightly. He slides his bat to sit flat against the ground, stopped from rolling away in its spot against the backs of his feet. He leans up and snakes his right hand into his pants pocket for his cigarettes. 

He makes a small noise of triumph when his fingers wrap around the carton, pulling it out and plucking one from the row. He sends one finger up in flames, igniting the end of his cigarette before snuffing his magic. He lets it dangle from the corner of his mouth while he awkwardly shifts up to reach around for his phone. He takes a long drag and thumbs a one-handed text message to Jackson that, in essence, describes how badly he wants to get fucked. His phone dings with Jackson’s _lmao ok_.

Stiles huffs and locks his phone. “Fucker,” he grumbles with an eye roll that he knows holds no real heat. He doesn’t love Jackson - _as if._ They hate each other; Stiles is a sarcastic know-it-all and Jackson is a man who’s never known a life without wealth. But, even Stiles - firmly no-strings and sexually nomadic - can admit that he is a tad fond of Jackson. He fronts like Stiles exhausts him - all rolling eyes and self-serving smirks and fistfuls of hair paired with mouthfuls of skin - but in the end, Jackson listens when he talks, offers advice with intent, tucks Stiles almost, _almost_ affectionately close in the post-coital afterglow.

It’s nice, what he has with Jackson. They aren’t really exclusive, but Jackson exclusively knows things about Stiles that no one else does. Things he hasn’t dared utter in another human presence. That’s the most intimate part of what they have - Jackson’s been cut by Stiles’ jagged edges, but rather than force him to dull them, Jackson helped him whet them into something more manageable. Still sharp but not nearly as biting. 

Jackson knows that he watches over his father, checks to make sure the wards on his house still operate correctly, even though the man let him leave like it was easier than breathing. He knows that Stiles misses his mother so badly that some days it feels like there is a gaping void beneath his ribcage, swallowing the space behind his sternum where his heart should be. He knows that sometimes Stiles pops pills when he feels himself slipping, regresses to his old habits when nicotine can’t scratch the itch. He knows that Stiles regularly tails his childhood best friend to make sure he is doing okay; sends his mom checks when she is struggling, used to pay for his asthma medication when insurance wouldn’t cover it. He chose to remain anonymous, but they most likely knew it was him.

In exchange, Stiles knows small pieces of Jackson. He knows that he is adopted, that it severely diminished his sense of self-worth to grow up thinking his parents didn’t want him. He knows that Jackson broke his leg during a high school lacrosse game and almost killed himself over permanently losing his ability to play. He knows that he went to Harvard Law on an academic scholarship - he didn’t pay his way in like he tells everyone. He is scared of people knowing that he is smart, that he actually made a real effort to shape up for Ivy League, that he had to work for it instead of having it handed to him.

They know each other, their baser selves, they know what each of them needs to feel fully functional. So, Jackson fucks him like the world is ending, pushes him to the edge only to painfully keep him from tumbling over, again and again and _again._ But, at the same time, he smooths his hands up and down Stiles’ sides while his hips rock. He matches every hard bite with a soft kiss. For every time he calls Stiles a name, there is an equal moan of _you’re so good_ or _you’re so pretty like this_ or _fuck, look at you – just – oh_. He rubs out Stiles’ wrists where the burn of nylon just barely raised the flesh around jutting knobs of bone.

In return, Stiles pulls Jackson’s hair and grips the backs of his thighs and digs his fingernails into the skin coating his shoulder blades. He showers Jackson with pants of _no one can do this like you_ and _you’re so good at this – too good – yea just right_ and _god, you don’t even look real_. 

Jackson treats him like a person rather than a weapon. Regardless, Stiles never leaves the bedroom without looking like someone fucked him stupid in every position one can be fucked stupid in.

In the daylight, he and Jackson revert to their usual selves, but that’s the comforting part of it all - they know each other and it doesn’t matter. They’re still them. So, perhaps he is fonder of how Jackson makes him feel normal rather than Jackson in general. Perhaps those are one and the same.

He’s shaken from his reverie by the grate of asphalt beneath rubber tires. The sound echoes like a bomb in the quiet of the night; not even the burnouts are walking the streets anymore. Isaac comes to a slow stop across from them, rolls the passenger window down and slides his sunglasses to reveal his eyes as he says impatiently, “ _Well_ , I haven’t got all night.”

Stiles huffs a slight laugh and hefts himself up from the curb, listing to the side a little. He crouches and swipes his bat before it can roll away, snuffs his cigarette out on the sole of his shoe, and dumps the butt on the ground by the gutter. He slides gracefully into the backseat of the Range Rover, giving Isaac a sloppy salute as he does so. “It’s a little late for a pretty thing like you to be out all by yourself, Isaac. I was getting worried.”

The man runs a gloved hand through his hair, there are flakes of gray ash smeared around the knuckles. His hair’s damp with sweat, curled tighter at the temples from the hard work that comes with clean-up. “Fuck you,” he breathes, all bark and no bite. He always smells like bleach and ammonia. Erica slides into the seat next to him, followed by Boyd. Derek always rides shotgun, the bastard.

The ride is quiet, just the soft hum of the classic rock station mingled with their low breathing. The clock on the dash tells Stiles why he is so tired. Now that he has had the time to stave off immediately gratifying the hunger that comes just after he uses his magic, he feels exhaustion begin to settle in his bones. 

He traces an idle finger below his knuckles, healed perfectly, no evidence of their earlier aches. Isaac says something to Derek, offering small talk. They speak in hushed tones, Erica leans into Boyd’s side with drooping eyelids. Stiles turns his gaze to the window, watches how streetlamps blur on their way by, framing his vision with strips of neon. When they pull up to The Den, Jackson is sitting on one of the front steps, knees up, hands dangling between them. He is still in his suit and he looks _really good_. 

Stiles is out of the car before it’s fully parked, walking determinedly up to him. He twists Jackson’s tie up in his grip, using it to lever the man to his feet so he can place a white-hot kiss right on his mouth. He pulls back before anything can really get started, using his hold to drag Jackson behind him. “I need you to fuck my brains out right now, Whittemore.”

They all but fall into Stiles’ bed, surrounded by stacks of leather-bound books that are sealed by runes, crates of vinyls, and boxes of liquid-filled glass bottles at the foot of the bed that clink when the frame shakes. Stiles’ room has always been his sanctuary of sorts. He can count on both hands the number of people he has allowed to see it, and almost all of them live in The Den. His bed is pushed against the wall, just a mattress held off the ground by a few dark wooden pallets. His record player rests beside it, sitting by one of the only two electrical outlets in the room. He has three windows on the opposite wall, framed by various hanging plants and shelves that are home to dozens of herb jars. He has a desk shoved into one corner, piled up with books and papers, his mother’s decaying copy of _Julius Caesar,_ and various knick-knacks that serve no real purpose but to humor Stiles. It’s the only space he’s ever really had to call his, and it’s perfect.

He mouths sloppily up Jackson’s neck, sucking at the space behind his jaw. 

“Is this your favorite suit?” he pants into his ear, sliding a warm palm beneath the waist of his pants, just under the end of his spine. 

Jackson shakes his head no and Stiles breathes _perfect_ before snapping his fingers, leaving Jackson in his navy-blue boxer briefs. The man groans but otherwise doesn’t complain. Jackson prefers to remove Stiles’ clothes the old-fashioned way, much to the spark’s impatience. He slides his hands under the hem of Stiles’ shirt, teasing him with hot fingertips. Jackson trails them feather-light over Stiles’ stomach, causing the muscles to contract against the tickle it sends through his nerves. He raises them higher and higher, dragging Stiles’ shirt in their wake. Jackson taps one of his arms, silently asking him to lift them, before he finally tosses the fabric to the floor. Things grow frantic after that. Stiles is pantless within the next ten seconds. Then divulged of his underwear.

Jackson bites and pinches along his chest and shoulders, sucking marks and connecting freckles with his tongue. Soon, calloused fingers find his hips, flip and maneuver him into place. Jackson reduces Stiles to the words _please_ and _more_. Jackson flips him again, pulls his hair, grips his cheeks to pucker his lips so he can seal them with the wet heat of his own. He groans into his ear, pants dirty things into his neck. He knows how to unravel Stiles, how to make him beg for it. He finds himself face down in the pillows, burying noises in the feather-down.

Jackson pushes Stiles’ knees up the mattress. He drills into him, hands snaking to wrap around his biceps so he can pull Stiles’ upper body up until his head is thrown back, aiming moans at the plaster of the ceiling. It’s filthy in the best way. He grits his teeth, coming while his vision turns blurry around the edges. He clenches his fists against the flames that threaten to erupt, arches his back as his magic pulses hot down his spine. He goes boneless when Jackson comes soon after. The man rolls off of him, ducks his head close to press a chaste kiss to Stiles’ temple. It’s weirdly affectionate, but not in a bad way. He blinks at Jackson, who lightly smiles back. 

“Your hair is purple,” he whispers, smug. 

Stiles groans and slides a hand up over his buzz, channeling his magic there until he feels it thrum under his skull. “Better?” he mumbles and Jackson sleepily hums his confirmation.

“Derek was jealous,” Jackson says, a non-sequitur in comparison to the mind-bending sex they just had. Stiles’ mind still feels too bent to comprehend what he just said.

“You just fucked me silly and you want to talk about Derek?”

Jackson huffs in annoyance and swats his bottom lightly. “When you kissed me out front, he was jealous. I don’t have to be a ‘wolf to see how tightly his jaw was clenched.”

Stiles says nothing, just offers Jackson a noncommittal _mmmm_ and stretches a hand until it meets his abdomen, slides it up to rest over the other man’s ribs. He rubs his fingers up and down, smiling slightly when he feels Jackson shiver. “Thanks for tonight. I needed that.”

Jackson sighs, but it lacks any real irritation. “Go to sleep, Stilinski,” he orders softly.

He does.

x

Stiles always wakes early; his circadian rhythm is in impeccable shape. He hasn’t slept past seven in the morning since he was fourteen.

Jackson is curled toward him, hands reaching out but not quite making contact. He looks much more peaceful when he is sleeping. Nicer. The harsh lines give way, falling slack and sloping soft. He doesn’t have to maintain his holier-than-thou façade. Stiles takes a moment to study him, bathed in the golden glow of the morning sun. Stiles leans forward, comfortable enough to give light affection when no one is there to witness it. He places a chaste kiss on the front of Jackson’s shoulder and traces a symbol for protection over the man’s heart before gently rolling out of the bed.

Stiles dresses quickly in a plain shirt with nondescript dress pants. He forgoes shoes, opting for mismatched patterned socks. He’s allowed to have some flair in this bleak world, sue him. He closes his eyes and visualizes a suit from Jackson’s closet - Stiles’ favorite charcoal gray one - and it surfaces in his grip. He leaves it folded neatly for Jackson at the foot of the bed, then slides quietly through the door, resealing the wards on his way out.

Peter is at the head of the dining table, hands tapping a mindless rhythm on either side of a noisy currency counter. The same hands that have snapped necks, shattered bones, drained life. He is banding the bills into stacks, all fifties, sorted into piles of five grand if the brown paper strips are any indication. Derek sits three chairs down from him, scowling at his own hands where he is scraping the point of a switchblade beneath his claws. They are both dressed to impress, yet Stiles feels no shame at his current attire.

He offers Peter a nod, sliding out the chair closest to him and sinking down into it.

Peter nods back, a sharp smile creeping lazily along his face. He narrows his eyes at Stiles, crimson irises calculating. “You look as though you had a good night.”

“I did.” Stiles leaves it at that, refuses to break eye contact. Peter is one scary fucker, but he is not afraid to match his stance.

Peter clicks his tongue in disapproval and pointedly allows his claws to slip around the money he is banding up. “Careful, Stiles. You know better than to mix business with pleasure.”

“My business _is_ my pleasure.” Stiles props his elbows up on the table and rests his chin in his hands, blinking innocently at Peter.

The older man just laughs. “Your charms stopped working on me years ago, little mage.”

Stiles shakes his head woefully. “Damn shame.”

Peter slips a hand into his breast pocket and it emerges curled around an orange bottle. He rattles it obnoxiously, eyes trained on Stiles. “I picked up a little something for you. I figured at the rate you’ve been going, you’d appreciate a refill.”

He tosses it to Stiles who catches it swiftly. He frowns at the label. “This is Vicodin.” Peter raises his eyebrows and Stiles clarifies, “I usually take percs. They’re stronger.”

The man just grins, unbothered. “Beggars can seldom be choosers, Stiles.”

Stiles makes a face at him as he untwists the cap and dry swallows one, raising the bottle to Peter in a cheers gesture. The man raises a stack of cash in reply. Stiles pockets the container and turns to Derek, who is scowling at him.

“Oh, please. Like you don’t have enough Ambien in your room to kill everyone in this house.”

“I need it to sleep,” he snarls.

Stiles pointedly taps his pocket, the bottle rattles lightly. “Don’t we all?”

Derek has night terrors. Stiles doesn’t know all of the details, but Peter alluded to some bad touch type shit and torture in Derek’s teenage years. Apparently the chick who fucked him up came from the gang Talia was supposed to marry into. She bedded Derek and scorched his family in an act of vengeance. It’s horrific, but no one in The Pack has a clean history, that’s the reason they’re here. Pity is no common currency.

Erica was sexually abused by a family member, the first person she killed after initiation. Isaac’s father beat him senseless nearly every night, he was killed before Isaac finished initiation. He paid for the murderer’s defense (not guilty) and got him a Rolls Royce. Boyd worked odd jobs and got the shit kicked out of him a time or two to help take care of his sister – his dad was a deadbeat drunk with a mean right hook and his mother was a high school prom queen whose life was dedicated to being an absent parent. His sister lives with a family Boyd picked out personally, she’d be eleven now.

They’ve all had a shit hand. Derek has no right to pass judgment on anyone’s vices when he can’t healthily deal with his own trauma. It makes Stiles want to scoff in his face.

They turn their heads to the door when Jackson shuffles through the threshold, shrugging on his suit jacket. The waistcoat stretches nicely over his abdomen. Stiles licks his lips. Jackson strides over and slides into the seat beside him, tugging on his tie, wordlessly asking Stiles to tie it for him. Stiles rolls his eyes and tuts, “You are hopeless.” 

He turns his head slightly to Peter, “What do you even see in him?” Jackson just gives him a surprising peck on the lips, pulling back with a devious grin. 

He doesn’t use magic, it’s too fucking early. While his fingers work the silk fabric of the tie, Stiles feels Jackson slide a warm palm over the nape of his neck, slowly dragging his thumb back and forth over his pulse point. The sex last night must have been brain-liquifying if Jackson is still acting this attached. Stiles feels eyes burning holes through him, he glances over at Derek to see his gaze locked on Jackson’s thumb that’s still moving lightly along his neck.

Peter clears his throat, Stiles can hear the smirk as he nonchalantly says, “I heard you had quite the night, Mr. Whittemore.”

Stiles feels Jackson’s chest puff up under his hands. Everything is a pissing contest. He huffs. _Men_.

“I certainly have no complaints,” he brags, nipping playfully at Stiles’ fingers.

Stiles slaps him on the chest. “It was alright.”

“Your hair turned _purple_.”

Stiles straightens his posture primly. “Jackson Whittemore, if you enjoy being with me, it’d do you well to keep your mouth shut.”

Jackson rolls his eyes but obediently says nothing.

Derek is eyeing them warily. “His hair turned purple?”

“Like a fucking grape,” Jackson nods solemnly.

“A testament to my low standards rather than his sexual prowess, I assure you.”

Jackson relinquishes the hold on his neck in favor of trailing his hand down to squeeze the top of his ass in reprimand. Stiles gapes, he is _so_ playing this up right now. Stiles meets his eyes and tries to convey _I will fucking kill you_ , but Jackson just smiles smugly, completely undaunted.

Peter grins delightedly, piling up the stacks of cash in a way that seems to be more for show than for practicality. “Stiles is a very _interesting_ bed partner. He turned at least a dozen of my sheet sets to ash.”

Stiles can see the exact moment Jackson’s eyes take on a mischievous glint. He tries to telepathically communicate to Jackson that he will fucking _castrate his Ivy League ass_ , but he is not swayed.

“I don’t suppose Derek would know anything about that. Would you, Derek?”

The man’s fists clench in their spot on the table, the letters spelling out _HALE PACK_ becoming crowned in white. It’s a wonder his blade doesn’t pierce straight through his fingertip. “I’m sure it’d be nothing short of an honor to get a turn with the gang’s warm hole,” he drawls, knuckles slowly unclenching.

Ouch. It only aches slightly to be spoken of so disrespectfully; but, in a way, he can commend Derek for doing it in front of his face. The man is very brave to brazenly slander someone who could kill him with a snap of their fingers. Stiles sucks on his teeth; he knows he gets around - he _likes_ sex - though he hasn’t fucked anyone outside of Jackson in nearly a year. This is the first time Derek has ever outwardly disclosed something about the prospect of them sleeping together. The first time he has addressed, however indirectly, how they haven’t dealt with the tension one could cut with a knife. Derek is being a hypocrite, though, with as many new bodies he inducts into the _Derek Hale Hall of Fame_ on a weekly basis. If he wants to be hurtful, then so be it.

“Derek isn’t really my type,” Stiles shrugs, tracing a fingernail over the grain in the wooden table. He fights a smirk at the steadiness of his heart. “I don’t find that superiority complexes make for good bed company.” He purses his lips and then adds, “or hypocrites.” With that, he smiles at Derek, sickly sweet, and scoots his chair back. “I hope you all enjoy your morning; I suppose I should find someone who’d like to fraternize with the gang’s warm hole.”

Stiles senses Jackson go rigid beside him, he circles a calming hand around his bicep as he stands. Stiles eyes the money, then turns to Peter. “I assume you’ll get with me later to award me my participation prize for a job well done?”

The man nods, all smirk and narrowed red eyes. “I know where to find you.” Stiles nods back and strides to the door, counting the tick in Derek’s jaw as a silent victory.

x

Derek finds him some odd hours later when Stiles is twirling in his desk chair, rereading the highlights his mother made in one of her magic books just to have something to do. Stiles glances at him before returning his eyes to the page, mouth twisting into a glower. “I hope you’re here to grovel. I’ll have you know, though, I only accept apologies in cold hard cash.” 

Derek scowls. “I’m not here to apologize. Peter wants you.”

Stiles hums thoughtfully, lets the hand drawing patterns in the arm of the chair come up and erupt into flames. “Allow me to reiterate, you have ten seconds to leave my line of sight, or I’ll kill you,” he says lightly, as though speaking to a child. Derek’s lips part in surprise before they slam shut and curl into a sneer. He huffs through his nose but steps back into the hallway and disappears from view.

“ _Good boy_ ,” Stiles coos, smiling at the growl that reverberates through the walls.

He unfolds himself from the chair, stretches a toe-curling stretch, and sets his book softly on his desk. 

He walks unhurriedly to Peter’s office, trailing a finger along the wall as he goes. He knocks lightly on the blood-red door, entering once he hears Peter beckon him in.

“Thirty-five thousand, counted it out myself.”

“Only thirty-five grand?” Stiles jokes. Peter shakes his head in reply and slides seven of the stacks from earlier over to him.

Before Stiles can grab them, Peter says, “Please, sit. I have some things I’d like to discuss.”

He sinks down into the velvet armchair across from Peter’s desk, magic thrumming warily.

“Tell me what you know of Matt Daehler.”

Stiles blinks. “I don’t know anyone named Matt Daehler.”

Peter studies him, fingers steepled in front of his face. He must conclude that Stiles is telling the truth, all he says is, “Interesting.”

Stiles forces his body to remain still, Peter thrives off of causing discomfort. “ _Should_ I know him?” he ventures carefully.

Peter tilts his head. “I just assumed you would since he and your fucktoy are so close.” He slides a shiny photograph in front of Stiles. He reaches forward and takes it. It’s Jackson sitting in a corner booth with a dark-haired man, blue-eyed and wearing an easy smile. Stiles fights what feels a little like disappointment welling up in him, slides it back into place. “Jackson and I aren’t exclusive. He can see whoever he’d like.”

Peter’s lip lifts up in a noiseless snarl. “I don’t care to meddle in your _pathetic_ love life. Daehler has a history working with The Hunters.”

Stiles feels his heart stutter momentarily. “Jackson isn’t that stupid. I doubt he knows.”

Peter doesn’t comment on that, instead, he says, “Have you heard about the issue with huge shipments of blow being laced? Cocaine that makes ‘wolves go feral, sparks go mad. Awfully convenient, wouldn’t you say?”

Stiles meets Peter’s eyes, searches his face for truth. He’s heard of the increase in feral cases, Peter has been taking care of them personally, eliminating them on his own.

“You think someone’s trying to infiltrate our supply?”

Peter snaps his fingers. “That is precisely what I think.”

Stiles gestures to the photo. “That man doesn’t look as though he is capable of such a large-scale accomplishment.”

“You don’t look like you could kill a man with your palms. You of all people know better than to underestimate the unassuming.”

Peter produces another photo, unmistakably taken at The Nemeton. Daehler is seated at one of the private tables with two men and a woman. Stiles doesn’t recognize them. The man to Daehler’s left holds tight to a silver spoon, lighter clasped in his other hand ignited beneath it. Daehler holds a syringe, suctioning liquid from the concave.

Stiles clicks his tongue. “An opioid junkie is trying to contaminate our coke by the truckloads?”

“You don’t have much room to speak about opioid junkies.” He brandishes a thick cigar, holds it out expectantly to Stiles, who lights a finger and ignites the end of it for him. Peter leans back lazily in his chair while smoke billows from his nostrils.

Stiles mimics him, slumps into the velvet and interlocks his fingers over his crossed knees. “So, what? You want me to take care of it? I can lace his stash with fentanyl, make it look like an accidental overdose.”

Peter shakes his head, tilts it to the photograph. “There are witnesses that can attest to his tolerance. They’d sniff out foul play like a bloodhound on a scent trail.”

Stiles nods along absently. “So, what would you like me to do about it? Regardless of how we kill him, they’d likely know we are to blame.”

“That’s the thing - I don’t want you to kill him.”

Stiles eyes him warily. “You _don’t_ want me to kill a man who is a blatant threat to our pack.”

Peter extends the claws of one hand and picks at them idly. “No, I want you to make your law school lover throw him off of our trail.”

Stiles feels his lips tug down with skepticism. “You want _Jackson_ to take care of this?”

The man laughs, low and mirthful. “No, I want _you_ to take care of this _through_ Jackson.”

When Stiles’ face doesn’t budge, Peter elaborates. “They are already connected enough to meet with each other without suspicion. Not to mention that poor man would do anything for you; they never seem to learn, do they.”

Stiles runs his tongue over his teeth, ignoring the slight. It’s a good tactic. Yet again, Peter has never met an aspect of Stiles’ personal life that he didn’t wish to exploit. With men like Peter, nothing is strictly personal. Especially if it can be used for his own gain.

“Alright,” he agrees, fighting the heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Peter smiles, all teeth, and rests his cigar in the crystal ashtray to his left, smoke still rising thickly from the burnt tip.

“I knew I could count on you.”

x

When Stiles makes it back to his bedroom, Jackson is splayed on his back atop the mattress, thumbing through Stiles’ favorite worn-down book like he belongs there. When Stiles enters, the man glances at him and smirks before returning his focus to the pages. Jackson clears his throat pointedly. “ _The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones._ ”

Stiles smiles, taking a moment to hate how genuine it feels before walking to stand beside him. He snakes a hand up to ruffle Jackson’s hair. “I love it when you talk Shakespeare to me.”

Jackson’s eyes light up and he smacks at Stiles’ bottom playfully. “You love it more when we aren’t talking.”

Stiles grins lightly and bats his hand away, crawling over him to rest at his other side. “You’re on my side of the bed, you selfish fucker.” 

Jackson laughs and then sighs, tone a little more serious, “I like that quote.”

Stiles hums. “Me too. It was one of my mother’s favorites.”

Jackson closes the book and rests it on his chest before rolling his head to face Stiles. “Do you think evil will live after me when I’m dead?”

Stiles considers it seriously for a moment, shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re evil. Me, however, my wickedness may precede me for centuries to come.”

“Do you ever wish you could leave? Just feel so deep in your bones that you need to get out, but you can’t?”

Stiles’ eyes shoot to the door, his wards have soundproofed the room, but what Jackson is uttering could get them both on Peter’s shit list. He recalls Peter’s words when he first met the man, he finds himself repeating them. “You can’t just leave a life like this. Your only way out is a six-foot hole.”

Jackson looks at him, green irises so dark they’re almost black. “If we could leave this all behind, though, If _I_ could leave – would you come with me?”

He thinks about it. A life with Jackson outside of all this. No more killing, no more drugs, no more ultimatums. They’d be on the run for the rest of their lives. That’s no way to live. “Even if you _could_ leave, it would be worse if I accompanied you. They may let you slip past, but they’d never let you rest if I were at your side.”

Jackson just sighs again and remains silent.

“But,” Stiles says, tone teasing, “if I could run away with you, I wouldn’t. That would imply we were serious. It’s almost as if you like me or something, Whittemore.”

Jackson rolls his eyes but huffs a laugh, pushing lightly at Stiles’ shoulder. 

When it gets quiet again, Stiles mulls over his next words. “Do you know a man named Matt Daehler?”

He feels Jackson freeze. “Yes. We went to high school together. Why?”

Stiles wrings his hands, tries his best to make his voice small, ashamed. “Word on the street is that he deals. The pills haven't been helping lately.”

“Stiles,” the disappointment is so real, Stiles feels like scum for doing this.

“I know, I know. I’m trying, okay. I’ve just been having a rough time. I’m sorry I said anything.”

Jackson’s hand circles his wrist, he squeezes it lightly. “I know you’re trying. If I catch him out again, I’ll ask him about it.”

“Thank you, Jax,” he replies softly. Stiles rolls to his side and props his head on his hand. “Keep reading to me. Your incredibly handsome face and your outlandishly sexy voice do Shakespeare justice.”

Jackson rolls his eyes but opens to a random spot and resumes reading.

x

“They seized one of our cargo containers,” Peter seethes to them, whipping his laptop around to tap a claw angrily at the screen.

It’s some grainy security footage around a port of freight ships, cranes lifting cargo crates this way and that in the background. He points out an orange container in the distance surrounded by men in blue uniforms flanked by canines in bulletproof vests.

“There is no cause for suspicion; no scent for dogs, no strange weight to call for transport inspection. Someone tipped them off.”

“You think we have a mole,” Erica states rather than questions.

“I think,” Peter fumes, “that we just lost _tens of_ _millions_ of dollars for no fucking reason!” He flips one of the chairs, it splinters to pieces when it crashes into the wall.

“Is it traceable back to us?” This comes from Isaac, who is leaned casually in the doorway like none of this bothers him.

“No, _of course_ it fucking isn’t. If you imply that I’d endanger us again, I’ll feed you to the other ‘wolves in this room.”

Isaac’s mouth audibly clicks shut.

“Did the reports say how they were tipped off?” Stiles keeps his eyes trained on the footage while he asks, careful not to give Peter reason to think he’s challenging him.

“Apparently they received an _anonymous_ phone call.”

“So, we just call in Mahealani,” Derek states simply like no one else is thinking the same exact thing.

“Derek, you fucking idiot,” Peter’s eyes burn scarlet. “The only people better at tracing than Mahealani are wearing the fucking uniforms in that video.”

Derek’s eyes flash briefly at the insult but he obediently looks away, subtly showing his throat.

Peter takes a calming breath. “Which means, they likely already know who called. The fucker has probably got immunity deals up the ass right now for their help.”

“So, what? We just keep an eye out for suspicious behavior. See if we can sniff out a rat in our ranks?”

Peter trains his eyes on Boyd when he replies. “Exactly. Be on the lookout, it could’ve likely come from people we’ve partnered with in the past. People we’ve refused to work with. Anyone with an in or a grudge is suspect.”

Stiles huffs out a slow breath. “Well, I guess we’ve got a lot of fucking suspects.”

x

They’re more careful after that. They inspect this set of bricks themselves before they ship them off, send them to low-level dealers, white-collar customers.

Stiles is seated in the back of the transport truck; the sliding back has been rolled up. Isaac and Boyd stand outside next to the crates, packing what Stiles hands off to them.

Derek is fully shifted beside him, taking up more space than is really comfortable. Stiles pulls yet another plastic-wrapped brick and very carefully peels open one end. He holds it cautiously in front of Derek, who gives it a slow sniff. After a long moment, he shakes his head lightly and Stiles nods. He ignites a finger and gently heats the edge of the plastic to shrink the wrap back into place before handing it over to Boyd.

With this method, they can eliminate the likelihood of a mole. They can also determine if any contamination comes from an outside source. If any sales from this shipment end up laced, they’ll know it wasn’t by Pack hands.

It takes for-fucking-ever. The truck was packed tight, so it takes them six hours of continuous work. By the end, they’re exhausted and sweaty as all hell. Stiles feels slightly bad for Derek, who has essentially been mildly sniffing coke all day. They didn’t find any duds, which they can’t decide whether to celebrate as a good thing or curse as a waste of fucking time.

Stiles heads straight to the bathroom down the hall from his bedroom when they wrap up. He wants to shower off the bone-deep exhaustion. Using magic for six hours without breaks is no small task, no matter how strong he is.

The shower feels heavenly. Stiles stands beneath it until his skin glows pink from the heat. He scrubs his hair until his eyes roll back and washes his body with Erica’s foam wash that’s been here since her bathroom had a pipe burst. Afterward, he swipes a pruned hand across the condensation-coated mirror, it squeaks lightly in protest. He stares at his foggy reflection while he brushes his teeth and fastens a bright pink towel around his waist so he can walk back to his room. He leaves his door open as he dresses in soft sweats and a t-shirt for a band he listened to before he hit the streets. Their music was really just rage-filled screaming. Stiles had been so angry for such a young thing.

He’s not as tired after the shower, so he picks up the dagger Peter got him for his eighteenth birthday and twirls it mindlessly between his fingers while he flips through some notes he took the other day on a new spellbook. He’s picking at his teeth with the tip of the blade when Derek appears in his doorway.

Stiles raises his eyebrows. “What’s up, cokehead?”

Derek looks at him with dark eyes, brows furrowed. “You think you’re better than me.”

Stiles resists the urge to bark out a laugh. That is the last thing he had expected to hear, but Derek has never been one for predictability. _What the fuck_. “What makes you so sure?”

Derek steps in, wholly unwelcome but entirely undeterred.

“You have always thought you’re better than me. You talk to me like I’m beneath you. You laugh at my issues but demand pity for your own.”

Stiles scoffs. “You want me to pity you? That’s what has your panties twisted?”

Derek growls. “You create double standards and then become angry when you get called out.”

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

The man makes a low noise of frustration and throws up an angry hand. “This is exactly what I’m fucking talking about.”

This time Stiles does laugh. Cackles, really. He sees Derek fist his hands at his sides. He continues picking his teeth for a moment, flattens the blade against his tongue. He’s still smiling.

“How old were you when your family died?”

The ‘wolf falters slightly, caught off guard by the question.

Stiles smirks lightly, inspects his teeth in the reflection of the dagger. “My mom died when I was in middle school. Everyone tells me that I still had my father, but I didn’t. Not really. The day we buried her, he buried me.”

Derek’s eyes blaze blue and Stiles continues, “Then, when I was seventeen, my father all but held my hand while I pledged my loyalty to a man named Peter Hale who used me to get exactly what he needed. A man who took advantage of my desire to be wanted, who realized I preened under any positive attention.”

Derek’s nostrils flare, he opens his mouth to say something but Stiles cuts him off. “Easy, Cujo. Peter didn’t do anything I didn’t want.” He locks eyes with him and clicks his tongue. “Didn’t _beg_ for.” He twirls the dagger. “I’m sorry that it makes you angry that I turned into a _warm hole_ , that I wasn’t incapacitated by my trauma. I’m sorry you’re bothered that losing the things that mattered most to me did not turn me into you. I am sorry that my comfortable sexuality makes you angry. I think you’re angrier at the fact that it makes me dangerous rather than stupid. But, fine, if you want me to sit here and braid your hair while you draw a venn diagram of our childhood trauma, I will.”

The 'wolf clenches his jaw and looks away. Stiles can still see the blazing blue. “I’m not angry that you aren’t suffering, I’m angry that you think I’m less than you because I _am_ suffering.”

Stiles shakes his head and blows out an exasperated breath. “Your problem is your martyrdom, Derek. Shame makes you weak. Fucking let it go or just allow the guilt kill you, for fuck’s sake. Stop making yourself suffer for it. Yeah, you and I endured some tough shit. The only difference is - I didn’t let it engulf me whole.”

Derek’s jaw ticks again and Stiles gestures at him. “You are filthy rich and disgustingly good looking. At this point, what have you got to be miserable about?”

The man’s jaw drops. “Oh, so you aren’t miserable? You nearly kill yourself on prescription meds every night because you are fucking _living the life_? Cut the hypocritical bullshit, I’m beginning to like you better when you’re fucked up.”

“Then you must like me an awful lot these days, huh.”

Before Derek can talk them into another circle, Stiles throws the blade at the floor. It plants itself just inches from Derek’s feet, making the man take a step back toward the doorway. Stiles stands swiftly and herds Derek to the threshold. “Enough about me. To address your concerns, I _don’t_ think I’m better than you.” He finally gets Derek outside. “As a matter of fact, I’m worse. So much fucking worse.”

It feels less satisfying than he thought it would when he shuts the door in Derek’s face.

x

Stiles is dancing tonight. Peter has dressed him in tight black shorts and a matching tank top since he will be on the aerial ring. The shorts are made of stretchy material similar to spandex, so they leave little to the imagination. But, Stiles has long since learned his lesson when it comes to complaining to Peter. While he tugged on the tight fabric clinging to his legs, Peter simply jutted his lower lip out in a pout and said _boo hoo_. That was that. 

He fucking _hates_ this job. Peter didn’t deserve all of the outstanding sex Stiles gave him. Their target is unfortunately straight, and he prefers blondes. Erica is at the bar sipping suggestively on a bright green cocktail chatting up their mark. 

Stiles is twisted carefully, his legs straight above him, his feet slightly curled together above the hoop while he hangs down, arms stretched toward the floor. Everything is upside down, he takes measured breaths while his head feels hot from the way his body is angled. He is only about five feet above the floor, rotating slowly from where he is attached to a low hanging beam. He keeps his eyes trained on the bar, watching Erica as he spins. 

An unwelcome hand slides along Stiles’ side, bouncing along the divots in his ribs, and he has to physically will his palms into remaining dormant. He smirks down at the man it belongs to, his face distorted from Stiles’ position. 

“How much for a private dance, sweetheart?”

Stiles forces his smirk to stay in place while the man walks in slow steps to stay with him while he spins. “You wouldn’t be able to meet my price.”

The man scowls but covers it quickly with an easy smile. “Is that so? You look a little cheap to me.”

Stiles grins, he can feel that it’s all teeth. He hoists himself up and around until he is seated comfortably on the ring, his legs crossed while he grips each side to keep his balance. “Looks can be deceiving.”

The man traces the lines of his shin with his fingers, Stiles feels the pinprick of claws. Great, he’s going to have to incinerate a werewolf on Peter’s nice floors. Ash is a bitch to remove from grout. “I can think of a few ways you can prove your worth.”

Stiles lays his head back and looks at the ceiling for a moment before sending a tight smile down at the man. “Not interested.”

“Are you sure you can’t be persuaded?”

Stiles blinks at the glint of the suppressor that appears, pressed deep into the skin of the man’s neck.

“He said he isn’t interested.”

Derek’s eyes are flashing blue, hand gripped tightly on his handgun, ruby-red ring reflecting the dim overhead lights. The finger hovering at the trigger is clawed. The man retracts his hand and holds both of them up in a show of innocence. He chuckles, “No harm, no foul. I didn’t expect this much trouble for a twink dressed like _that_.”

Derek growls, but before he can do anything, Stiles slides his hands to the bottom of the hoop and swings himself off so he is dangling just above the ground, dropping himself with a soft thud. He grins and curls a hand around the man’s forearm before igniting it. He keeps it lit quick enough to burn and extinguishes it after he feels the flesh wilt beneath his fingers. The man hisses and swears as Stiles leans forward to say by his ear, “This _twink_ will kill you right here without a hint of remorse. Show some goddamn respect.”

He steps back and aims a pointed glare at Derek. He didn’t need some white knight. He doesn’t know what the man is playing at, but their discussion in his bedroom didn’t _bond them_ or some shit, he can handle himself. God, he needs a fucking pill. Or three. His skin itches with it.

“What? No _thank you_?” Stiles resists the urge to turn on his heel and murder Derek in cold blood. Barely.

“Gee, thanks, Derek. Thank you for making me look like a useless fuck who needs the Big Bad to fight his battles.”

Derek’s jaw twitches. “He wasn’t listening to you.”

“I hadn’t had the chance to burn him yet.”

“You shouldn’t have to burn him to get his hands off of you.”

“Yeah, I should have just stuck a gun barrel to his throat. Noted.”

“Listen, I can barely stand you on a good day, but I have no reservations when it comes to consent. Or did you forget everything about me that you rubbed in my face last night?”

Stiles remains quiet. He strides over to where a girl in a pink lacey bra is pole dancing. He hates pole dancing, but he can’t go back to his normal station after the stunt they just pulled. He asks her to switch with him and she nods, running a manicured hand over his buzz while she giggles. She shoots a wink at Derek, who actually gives her a small quirk of his lips and a tilt of his head. Stiles hefts himself up while Derek sighs and says, “I know you can handle yourself.”

He scoffs. “I fucking hope so.”

Derek just huffs and shakes his head with a frown before disappearing back into the crowd.

Stiles twirls idly around his pole, ignoring the hands urging twenties at him. His eyes scan the floor once he realizes Erica has it covered. He nearly freezes when his gaze zeroes in on the furthermost booth. Matt Daehler is sitting across from a man and a woman. He’s using a black AmEx to scrape thin white lines into rows on the tabletop in front of him.

Stiles gracefully ends his routine and slips off of the stage. Erica doesn’t need a keeper; Boyd is manning the bar and Derek is no doubt just yards away. Stiles walks casually through the crowd, finally coming to stand by the table.

Matt blinks at him. Stiles twists on his most innocent smile. He gestures to the powder, “Good stuff?”

Matt eyes him suspiciously. “And you are?”

Stiles blinks and thrusts his hand forward. “Sorry, how rude of me. They call me Mischief. I dance here,” he smiles and tacks on, “sometimes.”

Matt drags his eyes up and down Stiles’ body, appraising him. Stiles forces himself to blush and preen. “I’m Matt,” he says finally. He slides over to free up space in the seat beside him. “Please, sit.”

Stiles thanks him and presses until they’re shoulder to shoulder. He quickly glances over and sees a plastic case open by Matt’s thigh. It holds small baggies of the pale powder. He narrows his eyes at the row marked with little red dots. He mentally notes how many there are, before turning to look around him. He giggles bashfully and forces his eyes to the table. Matt goes back to scraping neatly and Stiles takes a moment to assess the bodies across from them. The woman is dark-haired with a shark smile. The man has thin lips and light eyes hidden behind square glasses.

“You familiar with coke?”

Stiles refocuses his attention on Matt and shakes his head. “Not really. I’ve only ever experimented with heroin.”

He smiles. “You have to be careful with that around here. Too many dealers mix it with fentanyl cause they’re cheap.”

Stiles gestures to the lines. “Do you mix and match?”

Matt laughs like Stiles’ insinuation is absurd. “No, not at all. This is the real deal.” He finishes scraping. “You want to try?”

Peter is going to fucking murder him for this, but Stiles is too far in to back out now. Stiles nods and Matt makes a show of rolling a Benjamin into a tube before passing it to Stiles. He makes a cheers movement with it, bending down and dutifully snorting the line in front of him. In all transparency, it's a lot. But he is in too deep. He sniffs hard afterward and rubs his knuckle across his nostril to relieve the itch like it's his first time. 

“It tickles,” he says cutely and Matt smiles as he plucks the rolled-up bill out of Stiles’ fingers. When he bends over the table, Stiles sneaks another look at the baggies beside him. He's reaching discreetly for one when his wrist is enclosed in a vice grip. “What the fuck are you doing?” The man opposite of them has reached across the table to stop Stiles. Fuck. The man looks at him and something akin to recognition lights up in his eyes.

“I was just looking,” Stiles says defensively, playing dumb while attempting to tug his wrist away.

“Leave him alone. He’s allowed to look.” Matt shoots him an apologetic glance and Stiles smiles at him in reply.

He sits with them for a few minutes, watching closely as the woman politely declines a turn, as does the man beside her. Matt just shrugs. 

Stiles clears his throat. “I feel a little foggy, I think I need to run to the restroom. Thank you for letting me try it.”

Matt slides him a crisp business card. “Take this so you know how to find me. Just in case you want to feel foggy again.” He winks and Stiles gives him a half-hearted smirk to disguise how his heart is beating abnormally fast. 

He swiftly exits the booth, trying not to walk too quickly. He slips the card in his front pocket and once he feels far enough away, he quietly says, “I need to get out of here. Now.”

Derek materializes beside him almost immediately. “What the fuck did you do?”

Stiles doesn’t look at him, just keeps walking forward so he doesn’t draw any attention. “I went rogue for a second and slipped up.”

“God damn it, Stiles,” Derek growls.

“You can stay here.”

“Like hell. Boyd’s with Erica, they’ll be fine.”

When they breach the exit, Derek pins him. “What did you _do_?”

Stiles reaches his hands to electrocute him but thinks against it, letting them fall slack “I showed my face to a few people who probably shouldn’t have seen my face.”

Derek slams his fist into the brick beside Stiles’ head then shakes his hand out, cursing him under his breath. “Isaac isn’t here, the hit’s not supposed to be done for a couple more hours.”

Stiles reaches in the pocket of his bottoms for his phone. “I got it, hold on.” He dials one of the three numbers he knows by heart and holds the speaker up to his ear. “Hey. Yeah, I’m fine. Can you pick me and Derek up?” He listens for a moment to Jackson’s reply. “Thanks, Jax,” he breathes softly before hanging up.

“He’s on his way.”

Derek doesn’t reply, his eyes are flashing and his breathing is heavy. Stiles figures it’s best to let sleeping dogs lie. He counts the flickers of the _m_ in _Nemeton_ while they wait. A man with a stagger in his walk catcalls Stiles and a burnout with the shakes offers them weed. Stiles feels a little jittery off what he snorted with Matt.

When Jackson arrives, he is in one of The Pack’s sleek black SUVs instead of his Porsche. The vehicle jerks forward when it’s put in park. Jackson steps out and walks around to open Stiles’ door for him, hand coming to rest on the small of his back. “What happened?”

Stiles shakes his head. “Long story.”

Jackson looks at him for a moment before he says, “Okay.”

Derek slides into the back. Stiles doesn’t feel like ribbing him for it. The drive back feels like walking to the gallows, but that could be the drugs talking. He hears Derek speaking quietly on the phone with Peter, nothing but beats of silence and frustrated huffs of breath. 

When they pull up to The Den, Jackson squeezes his shoulder. “I’m sure it’ll be fine.” 

Stiles offers no comment as he unbuckles his seatbelt and slides out, the crunch of gravel sounding like gunshots in his ears. He hears Derek’s steps heavy on his heels. The car beeps loudly when Jackson locks it.

When he walks through the front doors, Derek just says, “Dining room.”

Peter is in his usual spot at the head of the table, holding a sleek black glock. He lifts it up and rotates it slowly in his grasp, eerily calm. Derek stands beside Stiles, Jackson just a few steps behind.

“Stiles, would you mind telling me what you so idiotically went rogue for this evening?”

He looks down at his hands. “I saw Daehler, I figured I could gather more information. He had these pouches of blow that looked like—” his mouth snaps shut when Peter raises a hand to silence him.

Stiles feels a flush creep up his neck when Jackson quietly repeats, “Daehler?”

“Derek, could you please show Stiles, our lone wolf, what you purchased for me tonight?”

Derek reaches into his breast pocket and retrieves a plastic bag of cocaine, marked with a tell-tale red dot. Stiles wires his jaw shut so they won’t get the satisfaction of seeing it fall slack.

“There’s no way they sold that to him, they would have known Derek was a ‘wolf.”

“I got the girl in the pink lace to buy it for me,” Derek says, tone indicating that Stiles is useless for not connecting the dots. Perhaps that’s true.

Peter tuts and reaches his hand out, palm-up. Derek obediently drops the bag in his hold. Peter shakes it lightly before training his scarlet gaze back on Stiles. “If you would have discussed your plan before deeming it good enough on your own, you would have been made aware of such a purchase. Instead, you risked tonight’s success on a half-assed decision made out of turn.”

Stiles subtly bares his neck in submission to his Alpha.

“For that,” Peter slides out the claw of his littlest finger, dumps some of the powder into it, “I want you to snort this. Since you are so fucking clever, let’s see if you were right in your assumption. If you live, I’ll allow you to formally tell me _I told you so._ If you die or go mad, I will rip you limb from limb and scatter your remains as far from your mother as geographically possible.”

Stiles freezes, lips parting in shock before he quickly schools his expression. He sees Derek standing stock-still in his peripheral. Peter tilts his head and motions impatiently with his free hand. “Sit down and snort it, Stiles.”

He obediently sinks in the chair adjacent to Peter. His hands twitch lightly, residual tremors from what’s already in his bloodstream. He swallows hard before leaning forward and sucking the coke through the same nostril he used earlier tonight. He leans back and rubs the side of his hand under his nose when he feels a drop of blood slide down the space over his lips.

Stiles internally cringes when Jackson’s voice cuts through the silence. “You can’t _kill him_. The Pack needs him too badly.”

Peter eyes Jackson coolly. “We need him, huh.”

Stiles hisses, “Jackson, shut the fuck up.”

The man doesn’t listen, just squares his shoulders and continues, “If he dies, you can’t replace him.”

Peter stands from his seat, taps a rhythm onto the table with his clawed fingers. _Click click click click._ “Can’t I?”

Stiles’ head feels a little hazy, but he forces himself to stand. It’s never good to be below Peter.

“Stiles, do you know that the most important rule of maintaining impartiality is?”

Stiles stays silent, he knows Peter isn’t really looking for him to answer.

“Having no ties.”

Stiles can’t really focus through the fog. His heart feels like it’s beating too fast. His palms feel sweaty.

Peter continues, “You mustn’t get attached to things that are replaceable. It makes you weak.”

He can feel his magic thrumming in his fingertips at what is beginning to feel like an undisguised threat.

Peter narrows his bleeding irises at Jackson, drags them up and down his frame, unimpressed. “Do you know how many crooked lawyers there are in Beacon Hills?”

Stiles sees but doesn’t register Peter’s hand reaching for his pistol.

“Hundreds.”

With that, Peter lifts his gun, aims the narrow suppressor between Jackson’s eyes, and pulls the trigger. It’s over too quickly for Stiles to even gasp. It's a clean shot, barely any splatter. He grits his teeth against the scream that tries to rake its way out of his throat. Derek goes rigid next to him, face giving away no reaction. Stiles feels his own features slip into stone; eyes turn hard as steel. His hands pulse hot with the burning need to erupt, but he clenches his fists against the urge, just stares at Peter’s impassive face. He killed Jackson.

“Learn to separate business from pleasure,” Peter advises dully, stepping over Jackson’s body to stride toward the door.

Stiles waits until Peter’s footsteps have long since stopped echoing to crumple. He folds himself over Jackson, refuses to look at his face. He can’t even cry through the heaviness in his head. He fucking hopes the coke kills him or incapacitates him. He is so fucking tired.

“You weren’t evil,” he croaks miserably into Jackson’s chest. “You weren’t evil,” he repeats.

“Stiles,” Derek says, cautious. It’s the softest he’s ever heard the man’s voice.

Stiles shakes his head. “He wasn’t evil.”

“I know.”

“He wasn’t.”

“Stiles, you need to go to bed, the coke is fucking you up. I’ll move him.”

“He wasn’t evil.”

“I know, Stiles.” Derek’s hand is tentative on his shoulder. “Go to bed. Use all of your healing runes or whatever, you aren’t going to die. Peter isn’t that stupid.” Derek helps him off the ground, slings his arm across his shoulders to hold him upright. He doesn’t remember getting to his bed. He doesn’t want to. He buries his face into the pillow on Jackson's side. It smells a little bit like him.

Stiles sobs but no tears come. The sound ripples straight from his chest, billows out of his mother’s abyss in his heart. God, _why is he even upset_ ? He knows loss. This is pathetic; he _feels_ pathetic. He _knows_ it’s irresponsible to have strings in a world like this. The coke is fucking with his head, he’ll be fine when it wears off. He reaches a shaky finger to his heart and traces rune after rune there until his body thrums liquid-hot with magic. He squeezes his eyes shut as he sobs again. And again. It feels like hours pass, and still no tears fall, he can’t conjure them up. He loses _everything_. He is poisonous and everyone he touches shrivels up, turns dark in his wake. “You weren’t evil,” he repeats helplessly. Or maybe he just thinks it. He curls up, knees nearly level with his chest. His skin burns but he can’t tell if it’s from the coke or the fact that he feels like a stake has been driven into his chest.

His mind pulses with the struggle and his nose aches as he finally slips into unconsciousness. He hopes he fucking dies.

x

When he wakes, he stares blankly at the wall for what feels like years. He is so tired of waking up.

A knock sounds on his door, he can sense that it’s Peter. He doesn't lift the wards. 

“Come on, Stiles,” it sounds like he is pouting, it makes Stiles’ lip curl, “ don't be like that. I knew you wouldn’t die.”

Stiles says nothing.

x

He buries Jackson next to his mother.

Stiles dressed him in the charcoal suit. Ripped the page he read from _Julius Caesar_ out of the binding and laid it in the casket with him.

Stiles isn’t religious, he doubts Jackson was either. Regardless, he reads a few scriptures about heaven and paradise over the fresh dirt of his grave, more performative than anything. He hopes there is an afterlife. A peaceful one for the good people. He knows Jackson would be there. Erica sniffles lightly, Boyd regards him with sad eyes, Derek remains expressionless. Isaac didn’t come. Stiles is strung out on painkillers; he swallowed the rest of his Vicodin before coming here. The pain in his chest hasn’t subsided. It reminds him of when his mother died, it is awful. 

“He wanted out,” Stiles says blankly. “I told him the only way out was death.”

No one says anything. He doesn’t need them to.

When it’s all said and done, when they finally complete the service, Derek rests a cautious hand on his shoulder. His rings feel heavy, like they’re branding Stiles through his clothes. “I know you loved him,” the man says softly, matter-of-factly. He knows what Derek means. He understands that he is really saying _I know you cared about him as much as you can in a life like this_.

Stiles feels his body shake, wracked with the tremors of grief. Jolts of rage. Festering wounds of inescapable fatigue. “I didn’t _love_ him,” he snaps, words venomous, spine coiled tightly, ready to strike. “He conveniently scratched an itch. I didn’t love him,” he says again, quieter, firmer. The underlying _but I wanted to - I could have_ , is there, unspoken. No one comments on it, but he knows they hear it. Derek just nods curtly like he understands. Maybe he does.

Stiles knows loss.

He lost his mother to the vice grip of a pulse oximeter and the red line threaded through the middle of the hospital television screen.

He lost his father to his mother’s memory, the skinny throat of a glass bottle.

He lost his innocence to streets of cracked asphalt in bad neighborhoods, men in wifebeaters, back-alley kids with withdrawals.

He lost Jackson to his own inability to keep his fucking feelings in check.

He’s weak, a failure. He feels his bones harden; lungs shrivel. He is so fucking tired of losing everything.

He waits until he’s alone, the last one across from Jackson’s headstone, to light a cigarette. He takes a couple of drags, relishes in the burn on his sob-sore throat. When he’s finished, he flicks the butt into the dull brown dirt pile.

“The good was interred with your bones,” he tells the tombstone quietly before making his way to the front gates of the cemetery.

He walks all the way back to The Den.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains:
> 
> kinda graphic descriptions of violence in the form of torture
> 
> brief descriptions of stiles' past relationship with peter which can be regarded as smut (in which stiles was underage) + stackson smut
> 
> stiles does not take derek's trauma seriously. he sort of uses it against derek actually, which is very shitty do not ever do that
> 
> drug abuse and drug dealing
> 
> uhhhh minor character death, mmm whatcha sayyyyy


	3. act ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this chapter is literally like right at 3k shorter than the last but i am struggling so we are just gonna pretend it is not. the plot of this story is holding me at gunpoint rn and i am just rolling with the punches. lots of punches are being rolled with here, y'know. anyway, this sets a false precedent for how fast i will be able to update, but i could not help myself jkdsdhjkghgjh. the format for this story is sort of choppy ? which is intentional. like, it jumps a lot which is a stylistic choice, but if the flashbacks and transitions between the linearity ever don't flow / make reading this hard, feel free to let me know and i will fix it to the best of my ability (:
> 
> thank you em for the constant inspiration + support. not beta read or anything because if i wanted to get called out for minor spelling errors, i would post something on twitter. lmao for real though if you see glaring errors, just like, yell at me or something. 
> 
> find me on [tumblr](https://iminsatiable.tumblr.com/)
> 
> warnings for this chapter are in the end notes (:

**Act II – Cardinal**

“Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower,

But be the serpent under't.”

There are points in your life that define who you are for the rest of your days.

For instance, Derek will never forget when he first learned to ride a bike. A meaningless, _human_ thing that was outshined by Laura’s first shift and Cora’s first steps. It is probably his only pleasant memory of Peter, the man smiling at him, indulging him when no one else would, forever ingrained in his five-year-old mind. 

Derek will never forget how Paige got the Bite. He will never forget killing her. How his family looked at him after that, how he _felt_ after that. How his eyes burned blue instead of gold. How his heart cracked, frozen over with a murderer’s guilt. 

He’ll never forget meeting Kate Argent, too young and naïve to connect her to The Hunters. Old enough to desire the feeling of being wanted but too young to visualize the consequences. His ears still ring with the sounds of his family’s screams, his nose still stings with the smell of his burnt home, his mind still carries the helplessness of trying to disconnect a mountain ash barrier with supernatural hands. 

He’d tried to stay away from Peter, evaded him for years before he had no way out but in. He was twenty-three when his uncle enlisted him for initiation. He was twenty-three when he met Stiles. A seventeen-year-old _kid_ ; scrawny, self-aggrandizing, and far too powerful for comfort. His hands burst with flames that reflected blazing orange in his maniacal honey eyes. He played so carelessly with fire and Derek had already been burned so many times. But he could never look away. Stiles was intoxicating in a way that left Derek reeling. 

Derek will never forget the day he met Stiles Stilinski. He’ll never forget training with him, knowing him - back before Peter molded him into _Inferno_ , molded Derek into _Cardinal_.

He’ll never forget, but, god, most days he wishes he could. 

x

Derek is more than a little skeptical when Peter comes through the doors of the training room with a kid who looks like he can’t be more than fifty kilos soaking wet. He has huge eyes and plump cheeks; he looks like a fucking _child_ aside from the angry twist of his mouth and the harsh lines of his face. He smells like cinnamon and rainwater, but he looks mean. Someone so young shouldn’t be so vicious, not yet. Derek wonders if that’s how he’d looked to Kate.

He scoffs. “You’re joking.”

Peter gives him a withering look. “You’d know if I were joking, Derek. This is Stiles.”

He gives the boy an unimpressed once-over. “I’m not torturing some scrawny kid, Peter.”

His uncle barks a quick laugh, like Derek is delusional. “It’s only torture if they’re helpless, my dear nephew. Forgive me if I’m overstepping, but I was under the impression that you quite like scrawny if your bedpost notches are any indication.”

Stiles gives Derek a calculating look at that, sizing him up. Derek hates how it makes him feel slightly uncomfortable. He almost wonders what the kid sees. 

Derek returns his eyes to Peter, evaluates the intense sensation of delight billowing off of him. He snaps his eyes back to Stiles, looks at how his hands are tensed as though ready to strike. He just barely keeps his jaw from dropping. “ _He’s_ the spark?”

" _He’s_ right here,” the boy snaps.

Peter cackles like a fucking maniac while Stiles eyes him with undisguised distrust. His uncle trails a clawed finger across the width of the boy’s shoulders, Derek commends him for not so much as shaking beneath the touch. “Lively little thing, this one. You will be initiating him.”

Stiles is fucking infuriating, Derek will give him that.

Nothing gets under his skin. Peter binds him to a chairs with iron cuffs, inhibits his magic while Derek hits him again, and again, and again. Sometimes with shiny spiked knuckles, sometimes with his bare fists, sometimes with metal bats that clink faintly when they shatter bone. Derek utilizes every insult he can think of: he emasculates him with slurs, talks about his father, makes fun of his looks. The kid just smiles, teeth coated in blood, and takes it in stride like being beaten to a pulp and degraded is the equivalent of reading the morning paper. 

Peter is rarely satisfied, though. This time, after Derek lands another blow that would have knocked out a normal human, Peter huffs in frustration and signals for Derek to stop. The man walks until he is standing in front of Stiles, bends so they’re eye level. The kid smirks while Peter reaches a hand in front of him and inspects it dully while his claws slide out. He caresses Stiles’ cheek with it, grits his teeth while he sinks his nails into the gash Derek made beneath his eye. 

“You have to _think_ , Stiles. You can't just sit here and take it every time. You have to _strategize_. If you want to live, then act like it for fuck's sake." He retracts his claws and cleans his bloody fingertips with the crisp handkerchief in his suit pocket, exhaling harshly through his nose. 

He takes a step back and barks, "Again."

x

Derek fucking hates it when Peter smokes cigars in front of him, the bitter reek of Cuban tobacco makes his nostrils feel like they’re on fire. He knows it’s performative, just Peter living out his mafia boss fantasies. Derek knows that his uncle only lights them up in part to irritate him. It works.

“What you did was risky, you know,” he tells the man. Derek isn’t necessarily uncomfortable with speaking to Peter like this. He’s his uncle, but the Alpha has a dangerously low tolerance for disrespect. He only allows questions from Derek. And Stiles, but the man has always had as weak a spot as he can afford for the spark.

Peter shrugs one shoulder like it doesn’t bother him. “I knew it wouldn’t kill him, he’s too strong for such a low dose to interfere.” 

“He really cared for Jackson,” Derek points out, trying not to grimace at the thought. He never saw the lawyer’s appeal; he was cocky and overly self-assured. The man was handsome, sure. Well-built and easy on the eyes, Harvard-educated. Even so, Derek just never saw his charm; he was rarely brave enough to dig deeper in order to find just _why_ he felt so irritated with their arrangement. But, if _Stiles_ had seen something in Jackson, then he mustn’t have been all bad. Or, maybe he was _only_ bad, if Stiles had seen something in him. 

His uncle scoffs, a thick tendril of dark vapor trickling from his lips with the action. “Stiles doesn’t know what caring is. That boy was half in love with me for two years, he could get wrapped up in anyone. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Derek clenches his jaw against any retaliation. No amount of Ambien can knock him out enough to forget how Stiles had crumpled over Jackson’s body, how he’d blabbered and sobbed as Derek helped him get to bed. Out of respect, the ‘wolf rested the blame largely on the drugs rippling through Stiles’ bloodstream, but Derek has seen Stiles fucked up before. Over the years, he’d smelled the copper stench of freshly cleaned cocaine nosebleeds. Heard the telltale rattle of some refilled prescription opioid in his pocket that made him exude waves of artificial euphoria. Seen the track marks on his arms before they were healed over with runes. The shelves in front of his wall of windows, the colorful bongs glittering like a church’s stained glass in the afternoon sunlight, casting vibrant mosaics across the opposite side of his room. Stiles’ eyes red and smile unguarded, laughing at things that weren’t even funny. He’s _seen_ Stiles fucked up on drugs, and what happened to him with Jackson wasn’t a bad trip. It was _grief_.

Derek just nods his acquiescence, ready to get to the point of whatever Peter wishes to discuss with him. “I doubt we are here to talk about Stiles.”

The shark smile he gets in response is answer enough. Peter leans back, a lazy, clawed hand retracting the cigar from his mouth. “Aren’t we always here to talk about Stiles?” When Derek’s expression does not shift, Peter sighs through his nose, serious. “By now, I’m sure you’ve established that Stiles went rogue to sniff out Matt Daehler.” The man looks at him for a moment. “That was good work you did, using the girl.”

It is far from high praise, but compliments are no common occurrence around The Den. Derek curtly nods his thanks and Peter continues, “We have reasonable cause to believe that Daehler plays a role in the coke contamination that’s been affecting our community.”

Derek extends and retracts his claws. Once. Twice. He’s trying not to show that he doesn’t really _care_ about this problem. “I don’t understand why we are so occupied with it. You saw with our work last week that, in full shift, ‘wolves can sniff out any foreign substances. What do we care about street betas and back-alley magicians going feral?”

Peter’s lip lifts up slightly before he schools his expression. “You make an outstanding point, Derek. I certainly have seen you change to full shift to sniff out defects _every single time_ you’ve snorted a line. My mistake.”

Derek thinks of what to say, but his uncle continues, “We aren’t even _aware_ if it can be detected in full shift, and if that’s the case, you can bet your fucking ass that it is untraceable otherwise, baseline ‘wolf senses aside. For all we know, that whole shipment we sent off was compromised despite the hours of work you spent roleplaying as a K-9 companion.” Peter takes a long drag from the cigar before setting it gently in the ashtray, the burning tip propped lightly on the rim. He steeples his fingers, turning to face Derek, the thick rings adorning his fingers reflecting bright as a blade under the chandelier. “The reason we _care_ about this issue isn’t because a few nameless gutter rats are biting off more than they can chew. This is about reputation. I know you aren’t so dense as to assume your payroll manifests itself. If our blow is written off, we lose our largest source of income. Contract killing doesn’t pay the bills, Derek.”

He evaluates the information in his head, considering it. If the strain is truly untraceable, there is little they can do in terms of damage control. If it’s riddling the streets, they can’t do anything to combat the influx of burnout bodies that are sure to pile up. Their only real solution is to attempt tracking it down to the source. It only takes one person to poison the water supply. 

“So, Matt Daehler. What do you want me to do about him?”

Peter huffs. “The original plan banked on the law school lionheart. Unfortunately, he is no longer an option.”

“ _Yo_ _u_ killed him,” Derek snipes.

The man just waves a dismissive hand. “I don’t care to meddle in technicalities.”

Peter cracks his neck and Derek waits for the shoe to drop. “We need to bring him in.”

Derek frowns. “None of us can get close to him, we have _Hale_ written all over us.”

Peter grins, he makes the expression look evil. “You’re right, you all have _Hale_ written across your foreheads. But, I am under the impression that Daehler quite liked Stiles.”

“You want Stiles to lure in Daehler…after you killed Jackson because Stiles tried to lure in Daehler,” Derek says flatly.

Peter snaps his fingers with a laugh. “ _Precisely_.”

His uncle is a fucking lunatic. Derek crosses his arms. “Then what do you need me for?” The looks Peter gives him has him immediately shaking his head. “I am not tag teaming with Stiles.”

“Oh, but you are.”

“How are we even supposed to isolate him? Past evidence suggests that he is never alone at The Nemeton.”

“Well, Stiles’ mission as the lone ranger wasn’t completely for naught. The clever bastard did manage to procure a pretty invaluable business card of the phone number and work address variety.”

“So, what? We are going to rely on catching Daehler through Stiles…sexting him? Showing up to his office for secretary roleplay?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of a drug-allied friendship, but Stiles is more than welcome to reap the benefits of secretary roleplay if he so wishes.”

“Then, I ask again, what do you need me for? Stiles is more than capable of holding his own. He doesn’t need a babysitter.”

“I am not suggesting otherwise, I know firsthand how much Stiles can… _handle_ ,” he enunciates his words with a predatory smirk that makes Derek’s skin feel prickly. “However, I do worry of him being blindsided. He said at the club it looked as though the man with Daehler recognized him. The last thing we need is for Stiles to get off his face in an unfamiliar environment and get attacked while his magic isn’t at peak performance.”

Derek is loath to admit that Peter has a point, he isn’t used to the man caring so much. But, this is Stiles, and Peter has always liked Stiles. He decides to maintain some of his dignity by not acknowledging as much out loud. “So you want me to just fuck around on the perimeter, lying in wait while Stiles does drugs for fun?”

“Ah, isn’t that what you already do, Derek?”

He grits his teeth at that. “Fine.” 

Peter smiles, nothing but teeth, fangs pushing into the skin of his lower lip. He primly lifts his cigar and tucks it into the corner of his mouth. “I assume you’ll relay the plan to Stiles. I think he is still rather cross with me for snuffing his fuckbuddy.”

Derek doesn’t reply.

x

Objectively, Stiles is beautiful in his own right.

His hair is a step up from buzzed, if you were to coast a hand through it, it’d swallow just your fingertips. Over the years, he’s seen Stiles grow it out to varying lengths, complain about it being too bothersome for upkeep. Derek had secretly liked it; it was charmingly untamed, which had initially annoyed him, in all transparency. Stiles is a jackass, but he has never been unattractive. Derek had fantasized about pulling on it back then, looping the strands around his knuckles and yanking Stiles’ head to bare his throat. His eyes are never the same color one day to the next. Honey, then tiger's eye, then driftwood. It makes Derek feel embarrassed, like he is some fucking lovesick girl or something.

Aside from that, he is fearless. Derek’s never seen the younger man cry, not even the time in training when he’d nearly killed him during a lapse of control. The closest he’d ever seen Stiles come to it was when Peter shot Jackson, and even then the spark didn’t shed a single tear. He takes no prisoners. On his nights for hits, things are done his way. He’s ruthless and quick on his feet, efficient with a simple wooden bat and skilled with the right blades. Nothing comes close to what he looks like when his hands go up in flames. Derek has come in his hand countless times to the memory of fire reflected in Stiles’ eyes, the unholy curl of his smirk when their targets dissolve to ashes.

Stiles is serpent’s venom bottled up behind a bubblegum smile - he’s wickedly ethereal, and Derek fucking hates him.

When he makes it to Stiles’ door, it’s already open. He’s on his back, bisecting the bed, shoulders and head hanging upside down while his eyes skim the book he always seems to be reading. It’s worn to hell and back, cracked nearly unbound at the spine, edges of the cover dog-eared and lilting, the title faded so lightly Derek wouldn’t know what it is if he hadn’t seen it in better condition when Stiles first arrived. It’s been nearly a week and a half since Jackson kicked the bucket, and he seems more or less over it. He’s been a little closed off, reserved, but Derek assumes it’s more a tactic of self-preservation than an outright expression of mourning.

The spark doesn’t even look at him. “This quote reminds me of you,” he says. Derek hears the man’s breathing pause like he is thinking before he backtracks, “Well, it reminds me of you because I assume it would remind you of me.”

Derek tries not to huff at the bullshit Stiles perpetually spews. He rarely makes sense. Granted, Derek seldom attempts to understand him. The spark clears his throat and recites, " _Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't_.”

Derek doesn’t get it, and he doesn’t care to. He smiles unkindly and narrows his eyes. “Riveting,” he says, flat. “You and I are together on the Daehler mission.”

Stiles looks up at that. “What? Did Peter assign me a babysitter to make sure I don’t get swept up by another hotshot lawyer?”

He scowls. “He’s scared that, in the event of you becoming too high, Daehler will blindside you." 

Stiles laughs and Derek tries to pretend that the sound irks him. “There’s no such thing as too high.”

“He wants you to utilize the business card. Maybe start off with texting him, then work up to…I don’t know, whatever it is you work up to.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. “You can say it - text him before I fuck him.” He scoffs at Derek’s frown. “I don’t understand what your big deal is with sex. You fuck nearly as many people as I do.”

“I do not,” he shoots back.

Stiles offers him a noncommittal hum and Derek bristles. “We aren’t the same.”

“I know, Derek, I’m _better than you_. You told me already.”

“For fuck’s sake, Stiles. Why do you turn everything into a goddamn fight?”

“If something I say makes you overly defensive, that’s usually indicative of it being the truth.”

“Fine, whatever. Just text Daehler, fuck him, snort coke with him - I don’t give a fuck. Just do your job.”

Derek needs a fucking break.

x

He hates to prove Stiles right, to validate him in any way, but Derek is _good_ at one-night stands. 

Over the years, he’s mastered the exact timbre in which to ask _can I buy you a drink?_ He knows how to separate the widows from the ex-housewives, how to divide the bi-curious from the rigid alpha-posturing men eyeing the far too inebriated, how to sidle up to a guy who is just his type and say _we should get out of here_.

Derek’s a good-looking man, and he knows it. It isn’t difficult to procure the shallow, the superficial, those who know nothing of him and have no desire to. He plays it up, sporting tight shirts layered with worn leather. He knows how to look disinterested, how to appeal to those who get off on the chase. Knows how to prop one leg higher up on the barstool to display a heavy combat boot, knows how to pair it with a scowl or raised brow over the lip of his cup. He knows how to sit at The Nemeton in a crisp three-piece, how to twist his watch and tug on his tie and smirk haughtily. He knows how to slip into vacant seats like he belongs there and thumb through wads of cash with tattooed knuckles covered in expensive rings. The people he attracts only want one thing, and it’s all he’s willing to give them.

He’s good at the sex. He’s good at slamming into hotels with someone whose name he didn’t bother to learn, fucking to the mechanical whirr of an ice-cold air conditioner. He’s good at the gripping forearms from behind while rocking recklessly, he’s good at the bruising holds and filthy talk.

He’s good at falling asleep sated - rolling off and panting, popping an Ambien and waiting until his eyes slip shut. He’s good at dropping his head to the pillow, feeling a little drunk off his partner’s heavy breathing. He’s good at getting them out quickly, even better at losing track of faces after it’s said and done.

Derek hasn’t really had a good relationship with sex since Kate. Even killing her hadn’t shoveled dirt into the chasm between his ribs. He still has night terrors, he wakes up bellowing out strangled screams, gripping at the covers. He will never admit it, but he is scared to settle. He is scared to focus his sights on someone, scared to trust someone intimately in ways that have been exploited. So, he won’t let himself have it. He sleeps with people he doesn’t care to remember, never lets himself get closer than he needs. But, it’s never _enough_. It feels like he has an itch that just can’t be scratched. No amount of sleeping pills or synthetic drugs or meaningless sex can ease the ache. He wants something _more_ , but he can’t have it. So he fucks and he kills and he just grits his teeth and _takes it_. Because if he doesn’t learn to take it, it’ll kill him. He would never give Kate the satisfaction. 

Maybe Stiles is right. Maybe Derek _does_ resent him just a little for being okay with this, feeling satisfied with never really _having_ anything. Hell, Jackson was the only person Derek’s seen Stiles sleep with more than once other than Peter. In between that, Stiles was scarcely at The Den, opting for nondescript motel rooms, coming home smelling like cheap bars of soap and overbleached towels.

Conversely, maybe Stiles is like _him_. As much as the spark fronts like he’s built for nothing but sex and destruction, maybe deep down he’s tired of having no roots. Maybe he _didn’t_ love Jackson, maybe he loved _having_ Jackson. Having something to maintain instead of slipping out night after night seeking someone to take the edge off in a way drugs can’t. Maybe he’s tired of having to destroy his body in order to feel something.

Derek shakes his head. He is not fucking _sympathizing_ with Stiles Stilinski. He doesn’t give a shit about the man. He pushes the thoughts away, shoves them in the box of things he will never address.

But, as he lies in bed and patiently waits for his eyes to slip shut courtesy of the orange bottle on his nightstand, he replays Peter’s words. _Isn’t that what you already do_?

x

Tonight’s Derek’s night and he is fucking excited.

His gums itch and his fingertips prickle with the desire to shift. He’s been thinking about what he’s going to do – maybe he’ll take the shape of his wolf and tease their target, sink his teeth into limbs and rip flesh from bone while they scream. Or he could slip on his favorite spiked knuckles, paint them red as they connect with the hit’s face. Perhaps he’ll take a page out of Stiles’ book, pulpify their mark with heavy-handed swings of a nondescript wooden bat.

The spark is currently standing next to their kill, who is eyeing Stiles with undisguised hunger while getting a little too handsy. Stiles is brushing it off, smiling bashfully while casually pushing away the man’s touches. But, Derek knows men like that - _Stiles_ knows men like that - they cannot be deterred.

The scene makes Derek mull over more painful methods. He could rip his spine out. Break his bones and have Stiles heal them so he can shatter them again, and again, and again. He could knock his teeth in and hold a hand over his mouth, force him to swallow them. He could mangle his face until it’s nothing but pieces of skin and blood, coat his rings in flesh so that he’ll have to soak them in alcohol tonight to get the remnants off.

He focuses his hearing on the low bass of the song playing, tired of hearing the man’s filthy talk. _I bet your mouth would look so pretty moaning out my name or wrapped around my cock_ and _your ass is perfect. I want to split you open, hear you beg me for it._

He wonders uncomfortably if anyone has ever been nice to Stiles.

He knows there is little hope that Peter ever took it easy on Stiles; his uncle satiates his hunger, he doesn’t draw anything out. Derek knows personally that one-night stands rarely scratch the itch. So, he’s left wondering if Jackson ever laid Stiles out and just gave him what he’s been missing. He wonders if the lawyer peppered soft kisses and whispered praise and rocked his hips slow and deep, if he carefully mapped the lines of Stiles' body, provided instead of demanded. He wonders if he sent slow shivers down the spark’s spine, reduced him to tears of gentle pleasure, splayed open hands over smooth skin in a caress instead of pinning him down, calling him names, fucking him rough and hard, ordering him to beg until the pleasure gets mixed up in the pain. He decides not to think about why it makes him feel so heavy to consider the possibility that no one’s ever actually _loved_ Stiles.

He snaps his eyes back to the younger man, watches his fists clench against flames while their mark runs a palm too low for comfort. He sees Stiles lean in to whisper in his ear but doesn’t catch what he says. The man nods along all too eagerly and follows Stiles to what they call the _private lounge_. Derek fights a smirk; they just never learn.

x

As much shit as he gives Stiles, Derek doesn’t exactly have a clean track record when it comes to drugs.

Ambien has been his go-to sleep aide since he was seventeen. But, his tastes have evolved. He’s purchased xans off peddlers at The Nemeton, bought bricks from Peter, and a long time ago he tried opioids for a stint – synthetic and prescription. Now, they remind him too much of Stiles. He doesn’t want to have more in common with the man than absolutely necessary. 

He doesn’t get fucked up nearly as often as Stiles, but he still reaps the benefits of the elite status that comes with drug trafficking.

Tonight, high off the kill, he sips a concoction of cold relief and sprite while Erica tokes out of a colorful bong. Boyd is with them, rolling a blunt, and Stiles is god knows where, no doubt inhaling something far more hardcore than what they have laid out in front of them.

Overall, it’s a good night. Derek falls asleep without a pill.

x

  
  


They’re all seated in the living room.

Erica is draped over the armchair like a maiden in a Renaissance painting or something, like _Venus of Urbino_ if she were dressed in all black with bright red lipstick. She and Isaac are playing Go Fish, a small stack of cash has accumulated in the middle of the coffee table for the winner of best two out of three. 

Boyd is watching a documentary about Antarctica's wildlife with the volume almost all the way down. Stiles is flipping through a book and occasionally checking his phone, his ringer on so it is obnoxiously loud whenever he types out a reply. Peter is sipping on black coffee, his eyes lazily tracking the subtitles on Boyd’s documentary. 

He takes a noisy sip of his coffee before leaning over and setting it on the end table next to him. He dabs the corners of his mouth with a napkin before declaring, “There is a girl outside.”

They all turn to him and he shrugs. “Shall we investigate?”

There is a girl outside. Or, a woman, maybe. 

When they open the door, she sneers at them. “For a house full of werewolves, it sure took you a fucking while.”

Derek shoots Peter a look, but the man’s eyes are glued to their visitor. A smile twists at his uncle’s lips and Derek fights the urge to roll his eyes. Oh no. 

She is dressed in a sleek suit, all white with black gloves. Her sunglasses are cherry red, complimenting her fiery hair. Derek has firsthand experience with scary women, he knows without a doubt that this is a scary woman. 

“And to what do I owe the pleasure, Miss Martin?” Peter asks, amused. 

She huffs. “I am sure you would love to know.” She gives each of them a hard once-over before asking, “Where is Jackson?”

Peter shrugs one shoulder and grins. 

The woman - Miss Martin - shakes her head. “Really? Leave it to you to snuff the second best lawyer in Beacon Hills.”

“Second best?” Peter repeats.

She pulls her sunglasses down her nose and sets cold green eyes on his uncle. “Don’t patronize me.”

Peter exhales a laugh and inquires again, “Why are you here, Lydia?”

“I suppose it would be safe to assume you are on the hunt for legal assistance, then.” She states it, like she knows the answer already. 

“Why, are you offering?”

“I don’t _offer_. But, feel free to extend me an invitation.”

Peter picks at his nails. “Who says I want you.”

“Everyone wants me. Give me a number, Hale.”

“Thirty.”

“A week?”

Peter scoffs. “A month.”

She takes her sunglasses off and secures them in her breast pocket before narrowing her eyes at Peter. “Seventy-five.”

He shakes his head. “That isn’t how negotiation works.”

“I am not negotiating. Eighty.

“Why would I pay you eighty grand a week, that is completely unreasonable.”

“You make millions.”

“So do you.”

“I know my worth,” she says firmly and Peter laughs. 

“Seventy-five, biweekly.”

She considers him for a moment, her mouth twisted down at the corners, before sticking her hand out and sighing, “Deal.”

“Excellent,” Peter grins. “When can you start?”

Lydia replaces her sunglasses and shoots Peter a tight-lipped smile. “Whenever I feel like it.”

The gravel crunches under her heels while she walks steadily back to her car. A pristine white Porsche, the same model as Jackson’s. “I expect to see the money in two weeks,” she says once she has opened her door, speaking in a normal tone since they can all hear her. Except Stiles, who frowns. 

“Why on Earth would I pay you for doing nothing?” Peter calls back.

She smiles. “Isn’t that what you get paid for?” With that, she ducks into her car, smoothly backing out of the lot and making her way to the end of the drive. 

“She’s a kind of a bitch,” Isaac says finally. 

“Yes,” Peter agrees, delighted. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

“So that’s it then,” Stiles states, bitter. “You found another crooked lawyer, huh.”

Peter scowls. “Don’t be whiny, Stiles. It’s unbecoming. Besides, I told you there were hundreds.”

They all file back inside, each going to their rooms rather than filtering into the living room again. Derek goes to collect his phone off the couch when he sees Isaac swiping the cash from the coffee table. When he spots Derek, he brings a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture and grins. 

Derek just shakes his head and makes his way to his own room.

  
  


x

Stiles gets Daehler’s apartment address just five days after Derek spoke with Peter.

His phone has been dinging consistently in the time since - going off when they were all seated in the living room, screen lighting up incessantly where the device sat face-up on the dining table during meetings. They have definitely been in contact. 

Derek parks in the furthermost parking spot, hidden by some neatly trimmed trees. “So, what do you want me to do?” he asks, trying to get a feel for their game plan. Stiles has a glamour over his Hale Crest, the ‘wolf feels oddly bereft that he can’t see the usual swirls of it peeking through Stiles’ shirt. His eyes catch momentarily on the faint scars from where Derek’s claws pierced his neck in training. He jerks his eyes away.

The spark wrinkles his nose, Derek tells himself it’s not endearing. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Derek huffs, “where am I at in all of this? Do I need to be in the building to listen for you - do you want me to wait here and watch the doors? What's your plan?”

Stiles chews his bottom lip, considering it seriously. “You should stay here. I doubt there are many ways this can go badly. I just need to scope out his apartment so we can come back and rifle through it without any difficulty.”

Derek nods his understanding and with that, Stiles unbuckles his seatbelt and swiftly exits the car with a sloppy salute.

x

It’s three hours before Stiles gets back. Derek had been genuinely debating going into the building when the younger man exits the front doors.

Derek instantly straightens in his seat, scans him for any outright signs of injury. He seems shaky and Derek watches his hands twitch with every other breath, but other than that nothing seems too off-kilter. When Stiles slides into the passenger seat, Derek almost feels like he needs to gag at the bitterness rippling off of the spark in waves.

Derek watches a little uneasily while Stiles wrings his hands. He has a dark hickey on the side of his throat, it dissipates into nothingness when he traces a rune over his heart. Derek puts the car in reverse and eases out of the parking lot, sneaking glances at Stiles. He finally clears his throat and tries, “You good?”

Stiles shrugs a noncommittal shoulder. “I am sort of too high to feel anything right now. He made me knock back enough lines to spell my name - my real one _and_ my last one. I thought my fucking nose was going to fall off."

Derek nods, stopping at a red light. “You were in there for a while.”

“You might not know, because Peter doesn’t make you do it,” he says blankly, eyes far-off and vacant, “but it really fucking sucks being used like this all the time.”

Derek knows Stiles is faded right now, he can smell the imbalance of his regular scent. He knows that, if the spark were sober - or as sober as Stiles is on a good day - they wouldn’t be having this conversation. “Did he…” he isn’t even sure what he’s trying to say: _hurt you, force you, make you feel helpless._

Stiles just shrugs again. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”

Derek hears the steering wheel squeak under his grip. He hadn’t thought about the fact that Stiles can’t fight back if he wants to accomplish this mission. Stiles jokes about it a lot – loving sex and all its facets – and Derek has made his fair share of slights about Stiles being nothing but a warm body. But Derek has never cared to wonder how he may really feel, underneath the forced smirks and the biting smiles, how having no choice but to slide into bed with marks may not be the meaningless blip on the radar that Derek has always thought it to be.

The spark picks his fingernails, then sniffs and drags a knuckle across his right nostril. Hard. “He just seemed a lot nicer at The Nemeton.”

With that, Stiles turns his head to look out the window in a clear dismissal. Derek just reaches for the radio and twists the volume knob. Isaac had the car last, so it’s still on the classic rock station. The chorus of _Casey Jones_ smothers the silence. How fucking fitting.

x

When they get to The Den, Stiles goes straight to his room and shuts the door.

Peter materializes while Derek is hanging the keys over the hook on the foyer wall. His eyes skate over Derek, seemingly satisfied with what he sees, he asks, “Where’s our man of the hour?”

“In his room,” he grunts back, eager to take a shower.

“Is something wrong with him?”

Derek shrugs. “He can’t feel his face.”

Peter just nods absently like he didn’t actually give a fuck. “So, just normal Stiles then.” Derek sidesteps him to head for his bathroom, not in the mood to deal with Peter and his indifference. He turns the water as hot as it will go and stands under the spray for what feels like hours. He rests his forehead on the cool tiles, he is so _tired_. No amount of sleep could ease the bone-deep weariness that comes with this life. It never feels like they’re living, they’re just surviving. Any day could be their last. It’s fucking exhausting.

He dresses in the sweats and tank top he laid out on the sink, intending to do fuck-all for the rest of the day. He’s toweling off his hair when he steps into his room, freezing at the sight of Stiles spread out on his bed like it’s his own. He’s holding Derek’s Ambien bottle with two fingers on each side of the lid, rattling it absently. He casts a brief glance to Derek before returning his eyes to the container. “You mind if I take one?’

Derek scans him incredulously. “You never take sleeping pills.”

“I take all kinds of pills,” Stiles corrects, smirking with a bravado that Derek doesn’t quite believe.

Derek runs a hand over his face in frustration. “Okay, I’ll bite. What the fuck did Daehler do?”

Stiles closes off, only for a brief moment, before his expression rearranges to something sharp and sly. “Aw, are you worried about me?”

“Get out of my room if you’re just going to be a fucking pest.”

The younger man huffs and falls to lie flat on his back, arm still holding the pill bottle above his face. “I just need something to put me to sleep, I don’t think I can do it on my own tonight.”

Derek is rarely the voice of reason between them, mostly because he couldn’t give less of a shit about what Stiles does. He’s a grown man, if he wants to engage in destructive things, then that’s his choice. But, something about how Stiles is acting deeply unsettles him, friends or not.

“I don’t think you should take anything until you get the coke out of your system.”

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t ask what you think.”

Derek can feel his body practically shaking with the desire to snarl in the spark’s face. He is too tired to deal with Stiles’ games.

“Get out.”

Stiles just clicks his tongue and gingerly rests the bottle back where he got it. “Daehler’s got wards on his door, like invisible mountain ash. It seems to only be to fend off ‘wolves and other supernatural Big Bads. I could also sense them on certain objects in his room: a briefcase and a lockbox. He’s hiding something - or hiding _from_ something.”

The man hefts himself from the mattress and walks on light feet to the doorway, pointedly shoulder checking Derek on his way past. “He’ll be at work at eight in the morning until late into the evening, I think you and I should be safe to investigate.” He snaps his fingers and an Ambien appears between his pinched fingers. He raises it in toast to Derek, who can feel his lips twist into a scowl, and pops it in his mouth. “Sweet dreams,” he chirps, disappearing down the hall.

x

Erica cackles while she puts her cigarette out on their target’s forehead. She brings a manicured hand to the man’s cheeks and squeezes to pucker his lips, depositing the crumpled stub into his open mouth.

“Eat up,” she coos sweetly, laughing when he tries weakly to spit it out.

Erica likes knives; she has blades to inflict every type of hurt - small ones for the face, thick ones with serrated edges to hack into muscle, long thin ones to leave fine lines that burn worse than any flame. 

She trains blazing blue eyes on Derek. He’s leaned against the wall beside a delighted Stiles who has clapped and cheered and laughed at every laceration. “What do you say, Cardinal? Want to deliver the money shot?”

She borrowed his knuckles tonight; she slips them off and plops them into her palm before extending it to him. Her skin turns red where the blood streams in rivulets off the metal. Derek huffs an aggrieved sigh and takes them – their hit looks seconds away from kicking it. He can stand to finish him off. Instead of wearing the knuckles, he just unholsters his handgun and sends a clean shot through the man’s head, returning it when the body slumps over and the heartbeat fizzles out.

“You’re no fun,” Erica pouts, but her eyes are glimmering with unrestrained pleasure.

“You should have let me do it,” Stiles tells her sadly, eyes still trained on the body in front of them. “I would have made it worth your while.”

Erica smirks and drops an eyelid in a dirty wink. “You always do.”

Stiles just shakes his head, but he’s smiling. “Do you want me to burn him or should we leave him like this just to fuck with Isaac?”

Erica pretends to consider it, but everyone knows the decision has already been made. “I think Isaac could use some fucking with. To humble him.”

“Of course,” Stiles nods somberly, and that’s that.

Erica lines her blades up on the towel she laid out beforehand so that Isaac can clean them. Boyd tugs the chair with the man still tied to it to lie flat against the blood-stained tarp, he plucks Erica’s large-toothed knife and uses it to separate the body into limbs and pieces. They take the piss, but they genuinely try to make Isaac’s job seamless. Clean-up isn’t easy.

On their way to wait for pickup, Erica glues herself to Boyd’s side, talking to him lightly while they walk. Stiles is a few steps ahead of the three of them, humming an unrecognizable tune under his breath. He’s in a nicely tailored suit tonight, cufflinks and silk tie and all. He looks really good, a little more dangerous than usual. He opens one side of his suit jacket and retrieves a freshly filled bottle. He shakes it over his head. “Anybody want a perc for their outstanding work tonight?”

Erica laughs, Boyd grunts, and Derek says nothing. He sees Stiles’ shoulders shrug beneath his suit, unbothered. “Dinner for one,” he chirps, popping the cap and slithering two thick pills from the bottle. He repockets it and continues his lazy walk. Stiles has been acting better, more himself, no traces of whatever Daehler did to him left in his actions. While Derek tells himself that he sincerely doesn’t give a fuck, there’s some primal part deep down inside him that wants to know exactly what Daehler did that made _Stiles_ need an Ambien to fall asleep - wants a reason to slip into his apartment and make him plead for his life.

Stiles staggers and gives a sloppy twirl, looking up at the moon glinting bright in the sky while he sing-songs, “I go out walkin’, after midnight, out in the moonlight.” He tapers off, dissolving the words in favor of humming the tune as he was a moment ago. Stiles is a contradiction. He maims and kills and tortures – with a smile on his face. He shivers with pleasure when he’s covered in blood, grins with all teeth when his hands light up, every part of him built for the kill. But, he also makes childish jokes and laughs at immature things and sings while dancing like he hasn’t a care in the world, like he didn’t just watch a man die. It forces Derek to remember that Stiles never really got to be a kid. He finds his lips quirking involuntarily when Stiles does a playful shimmy, laughing at himself, turning back to wink at them with bright eyes.

It’s moments like this where he finds himself wishing he’d never met Stiles Stilinski.

x

Stiles disables Daehler’s wards like they were implemented by a child, smirking to Derek as he tells the ‘wolf as much.

Derek is wearing his knuckles, armed with Stiles’ bat. He holds a hand out to stop the spark from immediately going inside, wanting to scope things out first. But Stiles rolls his eyes and scoffs at Derek, shoving past him with a brief flash of a flaming middle finger.

Derek walks lazily over to the living area, depositing himself bodily on the couch. It’s about mid-day, they’re opting to wait for Daehler to get home from work so they can deliver him to Peter if they need to. He hears various things rustle loudly while Stiles rummages through whatever the fuck is in this man’s apartment. He shakes his head lightly when he hears Stiles’ cry of triumph, bracing himself when he hears the younger man’s footsteps make a path toward him.

The briefcase and lockbox thud loudly when Stiles drops them on the coffee table. “These are warded to hell and back. Good thing I’m stronger than the devil,” he winks, seemingly pleased with himself for such a comment. Derek just huffs and says, “Well, disable them so we can see if we need to wait for this fucker."

Stiles sighs, put upon, and mutters something that sounds like _bossy bastard_ but he does as he is told. The spark rests one palm on each item, flat and glowing. He chants something in a language Derek doesn’t care to recognize, and suddenly they each click. That’s that, he guesses.

Stiles goes for the briefcase first, seemingly nothing but papers. He lifts one and skims it, flipping it face down on the table when it apparently has nothing of value. He quickly skims through a few others, putting them in the same stack. He finally pulls a thick piece of paper from the briefcase and his body goes still immediately, Derek hears his heartbeat pick up. “What is it?”

Stiles is still staring down at the page. 

Derek stands, uneasy. “Stiles what the fuck is going on?”

He gestures an all-encompassing hand to the case while he begins pacing, confusion and fear wafting from the rigid lines of his body. Derek obediently looks through it, plucking a passport from the pile. When he opens it, he freezes just as Stiles had. “This is you,” he says dumbly.

“No fucking shit.”

The picture is of Stiles. The name stamped next to it is James Miller. He has a basic London address, he is an organ donor. The age doesn’t match up, nor does the height, which is off by an inch or two. But, it looks real. There is a passport and proof of employment. Everything adds up. If Derek didn’t know any better, he would fall for it.

He picks them up, peering at the papers underneath, flips past a few faces he doesn’t recognize. He finds what he knew would be there. He doesn’t really feel vindicated, though.

It’s Jackson. The name stamped next to it reads Lucas Bates, supposedly from Providence, Rhode Island. His permanent residence is listed to be in London. Derek sets it aside to pilfer through the other contents - pay stubs for checks from a law firm in Watford, mortgage bills to a UK address, hospital records of miscellaneous emergency room visits. It matches up similarly to what was created for Stiles, they are close to each other. There is a bank statement detailing a savings account at HSBC holding half a million dollars, translated to pounds.

He wordlessly holds them out to Stiles after he looks over them.

“He’s got to be the one who cheated Peter out of his money,” Derek says, taking one last look at the bank statement. He thinks of the man Stiles burned, how he swore on his life that he didn’t know anything about the missing cash.

Stiles snatches it from his hand, eyes tracing it while his other hand palms over his buzzcut. Something dawns in his expression, realization. He looks at Derek, “He was going to leave.”

Derek gestures to the papers. “Yeah. But you already told us that.”

Stiles shakes his head. “No. He _told_ me. He was going to leave and he wanted me to go with him. I thought he was taking the piss.”

Derek mulls it over while Stiles chews his bottom lip. The spark’s eyes snap to him, “It just. It feels _too easy_. Nothing is this cut and dry. But, if he did take the money, then it was Jackson.”

“It was Jackson…” Derek isn’t connecting the dots.

“Who called the feds. He was going to leave, what better way to go than with an immunity deal?” Stiles picks up the briefcase and hauls it across the room, growling, “That dumbass! No one’s immune to death.” He wrings his hands, runs them over his hair, starts to laugh a little hysterically. “Peter fucking _knew_. There is no way he didn’t. He killed Jackson because he was going to turn tail and run, not because of me.”

It makes sense, in a way. Peter loves nothing quite like he loves making a spectacle. Even so, Derek thought what he’d done to Jackson was a tad unnecessary, just making a point about fuckbuddies. It seemed a little déclassé for Peter’s taste. Peter had already had his gun at the ready that night, and he wouldn’t have dared snuff Stiles or Derek. Which means the gun was for Jackson the entire time. He wanted to feign punishment for Stiles breaking away - but in actuality, Jackson’s death was premeditated, Stiles just presented an opportunity. Even so, it is too clean a break. This is all a little too perfect, Jackson having an immunity deal on top of a solid plan. Or maybe Derek is just a pessimist. 

“Why would Daehler do this for Jackson?” Derek motions to the papers. “It had to have taken a lot of time to produce a seamless counterfeit identity like that.”

Stiles throws his hands out to his sides. “I don’t fucking know; Jackson and I didn’t really _talk_ about this shit, I was a little preoccupied whenever we were together,” he snaps.

Derek shrugs, lifting his palms out in a placating gesture. “All I’m saying is - Jackson must have had a really good way to pay him back.”

Stiles fixes him with a look, like he thinks Derek is the dumbest person alive. Stiles is always looking at him like that. “Jackson was rich, Derek. Richer than you. He could have gotten anything money could buy with a snap of his fingers. So it isn’t the _how_ we are looking for - it is the _why_.”

He scratches a hand over his scruff, squeezing his chin. “If Jackson ratted for immunity, it’s still too simple for papers like that. Which would mean he did pay for them. But, if he was _richer than me_ ,” he repeats Stiles’ words flatly, sending him a dry look, “then what use would he have with half a million dollars of Peter’s blood money? It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”

“Since when does anything make any fucking sense?” Stiles sighs explosively and cranes his neck to look blankly at the ceiling. Derek tries not to stare too hard at his bared throat, the long planes of skin blanketing tendons that lead to a pretty pulse point. He swallows and looks back to the table. “What about the lockbox?”

“By all means, open it.”

Derek leans forward and nudges the entrance open cautiously, when he swings it the entire way open his face scrunches in confusion. “It’s…vials?”

Stiles crosses the space to step beside him, bending to inspect the contents himself. He reaches in and plucks one, holding it in the light. It’s a small glass container of thick transparent liquid, ridden with little air bubbles. The secured top looks like it’s meant to be punctured and siphoned into a syringe. “What the fuck is this?”

Derek shrugs. “It looks like mucus.”

Stiles fake gags at that before his expression sobers up. He appraises the lockbox seriously. “What would an opioid dealer who works at an accounting firm need with a dozen vials of…slime?”

“Maybe it’s a new synthetic drug, who knows what they fuck with on the streets these days.”

Stiles shakes his head, still tipping the vial this way and that, watching the liquid slowly slide from one side to another. “Not to toot my own junkie horn, but if this were on the streets, I’d have known about it.”

Derek nods, Stiles is well versed in street shit. “So, what? Should we just pocket it and bring it to Peter?”

Stiles snaps his honey gaze to meet Derek’s eyes. “I say we let Peter ask the man himself.”

Derek smirks and nods, returning to his spot on the couch. Now, all they do is wait.

x

It’s two hours before Derek hears movement down the hall.

Stiles put up placebo wards in case Daehler could sense an absence of magic. Since then, they’ve done fuck all just waiting around for him. Stiles researched as much as he could on his phone about what could possibly be in the vials and Derek browsed a few different apps looking for potential hookups. He likes to plan ahead.

He gestures at Stiles, bringing a finger to his lips to signal that he remain quiet before jerking his head to the door.

They move quietly, Stiles just on the other side and Derek only a handful of steps ahead. They hold their breath when the lock clicks with the insertion of a key. Stiles has his hands poised mid-air, ready to strike.

The door swings open and barely avoids making contact with the spark’s body, as soon as Daehler comes into view, Stiles is on him. Derek raises the bat, ready to swing, but Stiles’ hands crackle with electricity and Daehler is down in seconds, groaning through his teeth while Stiles sends a steady voltage through him. “Have a nice trip,” Stiles coos sweetly, threading his fingers through Daehler’s hair and slamming his skull into the edge of the still open door. The man is out like a light, slumping bodily to the floor.

Stiles looks at him, panting, and grins wildly. “Sometimes it’s just too easy.”

x

Boyd meets them outside when they pull up to The Den, ready to set Daehler up for interrogation. Derek gives him a nod and Stiles claps him on the shoulder on his way by.

Once inside, Stiles makes a beeline for the dining room and Derek follows behind him.

“Peter, you sick bastard!” Stiles’ fingers are twitching at his sides as he crosses the threshold. 

Peter is at the head of the table, head tilted. “Why hello, Stiles. It’s always a pleasure.”

“You made me think I killed him,” Stiles fumes.

Peter just raises his eyebrows and runs his tongue loudly over his teeth, lips pulling into a smirk. “Are you insinuating that I am to blame for your own assumptions? That’s awfully rudimentary, even for you.”

Derek watches as Stiles clenches his fists. “You implied that his death was simply to punish me for my poor decisions.”

Peter hums, skirting a claw over the grain in the table, completely unbothered. “A man can die for more than one reason, Stiles. Someone ought to take flowers to Jackson’s grave, seeing how his death seems to have killed two of my birdies with one stone.”

Stiles rolls his jaw but says nothing.

Derek clears his throat and steps forward, retrieving one of the vials from his pocket. “A dozen of these were in a lockbox at Daehler’s apartment. It could be linked with the contamination problem.”

Peter eyes it warily, but reaches a hand out for it nonetheless. Once he has it, he rotates it much the same way that Stiles had earlier, watching it closely while the liquid slides along the glass. He purses his lips. “Well, I suppose we’ll just have to ask him about it.” His eyes snap to look at the two of them. “Both of you are with me for interrogation. It’ll be just us three.” He smiles, fangs shining. “For now.”

He then waves a hand in dismissal. “Go dress for a potential kill. Arm yourself accordingly. Stiles, you’ll be the lead on this.”

Stiles just shoots him a salute and brushes past Derek, not caring to listen if Peter has more to say. Peter watches him go with bright eyes. He snaps his red gaze to Derek. “You’re second, so don’t worry about too many weapons. I think Stiles will have us covered on this.”

Derek nods and makes his way to his own room to get ready.

x

Just after Derek finishes slipping on his shirt, Stiles appears in his doorway. Derek has to work hard to keep his expression neutral. He has on a dark button-down with sleek pants to match. He’s wearing black boots raised on a bit of a heel. There is a knife strapped to his left thigh and a set of heavy knuckles on his right hand. He looks really good.

Derek clears his throat and raises an eyebrow, silently asking what the _fuck_ he is doing in his room.

“I need my bat.”

Oh. Right. Derek tilts his head to the corner of his room, where the bat is resting against the side of his dresser. Stiles nods and strides over, picking it up and twirling it with nimble fingers. He looks at Derek and rakes his eyes over his body. He fights hard not to move out of Stiles’ line of sight. Never turn your back on a threat. Stiles brings his eyeline back to meet Derek’s and curls his lips into a slow smirk.

“Well? Let’s get this show on the road.”

x

Daehler is standing in the middle of the room. His hands are handcuffed behind his back, arms bound to his sides with thick lines of rope. A wide piece of silver duct tape muffles whatever words he is frantically spewing when Derek and Stiles step through the door. Peter is already there, leaning against the door and tapping away at his phone. He looks up when they enter and grins sharply.

Stiles rolls his shoulders back and twirls the bat, catching its downward arc into the open palm of his opposite hand. It makes a light noise where it connects with the brass knuckles. He circles Daehler like a predator, eyes cool, mouth set in a grim, unforgiving line. Right now he is _Inferno_ , Derek blinks at how scary he has become, no trace of the man who gagged exaggeratedly at the slime in Daehler’s apartment. 

He steps in front of Daehler and tilts his head, tutting, “You’re not so big and bad now, are you?”

The man looks at Stiles with pleading eyes and the spark huffs in annoyance. He takes a wide step back and suddenly slams the bat into Daehler’s side. His cry of pain is buried into the tape, embedded in the adhesive. He staggers a few steps to the side, but Derek commends him for not falling. Stiles circles him again and begins to speak, voice cold, “They always want me to beg - _beg for me to fuck you_ , _beg for me to gag you_ , _beg for me to give you exactly what you deserve_.” He spits the words out like they’re poison. He comes face to face with Daehler again, and rips the tape from his mouth. Derek would be surprised if skin didn’t come off from the force of it. Derek isn’t paying attention to the litany of pathetic lines coming from the man’s mouth, he’s more interested in how Stiles quickly twists the bat so the thick end rests in his grip, how he brings the circular tip below the handle to crash into Daehler’s jaw. The bone crunches and the man stumbles, knees bending, but he still doesn’t fall.

“Well, now I want _you_ to beg for _me_. I want you to beg me to _stop_ , I want you to beg me for _mercy_ , I want you to fucking beg for my _forgiveness_.” Stiles steps around him again and swings his bat to meet the backs of Daehler’s legs, finally sending the man to the floor. Stiles twists the man’s hair in his fingers and clenches his fist, wrenching Daehler’s head up from where it was facing the ground.

“No better place to grovel than on your knees. This is how you had me, isn’t it?” Stiles is snarling, tone dripping with acid. He slams the bat into the back of Daehler’s head, the man screams through gritted teeth and lurches forward with the blow, nearly doubling over.

“I fucking said _beg_ , god damn it.”

“ _Pleasepleaseplease_ ,” Daehler groans out.

Stiles clicks his tongue, “Not good enough.” He kicks Daehler between his shoulder blades, sending him on his stomach. He places a thick boot on the man’s back, heel digging into one of the divots of his spine.

“ _Please_ , I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, _pleasepleaseplease_.”

Stiles tuts, grinding his heel into Daehler’s backbone. “You’re getting warmer. But I didn’t ask for your _apologies_. I asked you to _beg me_ for your fucking life!”

Daehler lifts his head weakly from the floor. “ _Please_ have mercy on me. _Please_ forgive me, I’m sorry, please _please_ forgive me.”

Stiles smirks, it looks desirably wicked. “That’s more like it.” Daehler is still releasing a cacophony of pleas when Stiles lifts his foot and returns it in a crushing kick to the man’s side. Daehler’s words stop, replaced by groans. Stiles _tsks_ and presses his bat down in the space his foot occupied. 

“Don’t stop on my account. By all means, keep going. Don’t let me distract you.” With that, Stiles retracts the bat and swings it into Daehler’s back, just below the blades of his shoulders. Derek hears something akin to bones cracking and Daehler wheezes.

Peter steps forward finally, mouth twisted into a maniacal smile, eyes blazing. He holds a hand up to Stiles. “That’s enough for now. Thank you, Stiles.” 

Stiles steps back, shoulders heaving with his ragged breaths. He walks to stand by Derek, eyes never leaving Daehler’s prone form.

The man tilts his head and spits, “You said you work for a family business.”

Stiles dismisses him blankly with a wave of his hand, “Semantics.”

Peter chuckles and crouches in front of Daehler. “Tell me Matt – I can call you Matt, can’t I – what business did you have with Jackson Whittemore?”

Daehler blinks. “We went to high school together.” He doesn’t offer anything further. Peter hums and extends a hand to Daehler’s face in a caress, he tries to shy away but it’s futile. Peter extends his claws and buries them in the man’s cheek. “I’ll let that slide as a test round. Try again.”

Daehler scowls and it turns into a grimace of pain seeing as to how Peter’s claws remain embedded in his face. “He came to me asking for help getting out.”

Peter tilts his head. “And how did you help him?”

“I set him up with the basics – passport, bills, proof of employment.”

Peter sucks his teeth. “And, do tell, what a man like Jackson Whittemore had to pay for a favor like that?”

Daehler remains silent. Peter frowns. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way, Matt. Fair warning, I’ll let Stiles take care of the hard way.”

Daehler’s face twists and he grits out, “He traded some of his control.”

Peter retracts his claws and leans back on his haunches, bouncing lightly while he tilts his head. He huffs a mocking laugh, “Jackson Whittemore wouldn’t have known control if it shot him between the eyes.” He chuckles lowly to himself and shoots a glance at Stiles, “Sorry. Too soon?”

Derek hears Stiles’ teeth grind together. 

When Daehler stays quiet, Peter rolls his eyes. “Fine. What kind of control?”

Daehler’s lips remain sealed and Peter sighs. “Alright, different tactic.” His uncle reaches into his breast pocket and surfaces with one of the vials. “What is this?”

The man pales considerably but still says nothing. Derek feels his gums itch in frustration.

“How about this,” Peter says lightly, “you tell me what the fuck Jackson did, or I force you to swallow every last drop of whatever is in this bottle.”

Daehler gulps, Derek watches how his adam’s apple bobs. “Jackson underwent a transformation in exchange for papers and ensured safety once abroad.”

Peter growls, “Stop beating around the fucking bush before I let Stiles play with you. What _kind_ of transformation?”

Daehler jerks his head at the vial. “He made the venom for us.”

“How,” Peter says simply. A statement rather than a question. 

“Have you ever heard of a kanima?”

Peter’s face goes blank. “You’re telling me Jackson willingly turned into a kanima just for a chance to leave.”

Daehler just nods, looking a bit too smug for a man in his position.

“Tell me, what use do The Hunters have with a kanima’s venom?”

Daehler laughs, it’s a mocking and mirthless thing. Derek feels his eyes blaze at the sound, he sees Stiles twitch in his peripheral.

“You guys think I work for The Hunters?” He laughs again, a little hysterically. “Oh, boy. You guys are _fucked._ ”

Peter frowns. “Who do you work for?”

Daehler avoids the question. “Why don’t you all just ask Jackson?”

Peter’s lip lifts in a snarl. “I’m afraid I don’t have a Ouija board on hand.”

Daehler’s eyes light up. “You guys are _fucked_ ,” he says again, delighted.

Peter sneers and seizes him by the throat. “Who do you work for?”

Derek jerks slightly at the shrill ring of Peter’s phone. “Right on time,” Daehler chirps, blood staining his teeth.

He sees his uncle’s jaw clench as he releases Daehler and rises to answer it. “This better be fucking good,” he snaps into the phone.

“Where are you?” It’s Isaac.

“Interrogating a snake.”

“Jackson’s grave is empty.”

“ _What_ ,” Peter’s grip on the device goes white-knuckled, it’s a wonder the phone doesn’t snap in half.

“He’s gone. Erica smelled something off and we followed it here. There’s no body.”

“Is there a scent? Why the _fuck_ are you wasting time _calling_ me?”

Isaac denies the presence of a trail. “There is nothing to go off of here. The only trace was a note in the casket.”

“Well, what the fuck does it say?"

Isaac clears his throat. Derek can hear the crinkle of paper. “ _An eye for an eye - or in this case I suppose it’s an eye for two eyes. Always a pleasure doing business with you, Peter._ ”

Peter pales and hangs up while Isaac is still talking. He looks over at Derek and Stiles. “Deucalion,” is all he says. Daehler laughs like a fucking maniac while Peter strides to the door. He turns to Stiles, waving a hand toward the man on the floor. “Light him up and meet me in the dining room.”

When Stiles doesn’t move, Peter takes a menacing step closer. “I said light him up. Now."

Stiles looks down at his knuckles, the knife on his thigh. Finally, Stiles nods and presses his palms on Daehler’s back, pinning him down while they burst into flames. Daehler doesn’t even scream, just laughs and laughs.

“You’re fucked,” he gargles out.

Derek believes him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> allusions to kate argent + stiles being an asshole (what's new)
> 
> some gory thoughts and an overabundance of the word fuck in all of its glorious forms
> 
> allusions to / implied noncon with another character, but no graphic scenes detailing such 
> 
> pretty graphic torture scene


	4. interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i decided i am going to do a thing where maybe every couple of chapters i will post a little inside perspective of a background character’s life. this one is jackson. so this is a little under 3k but it just gives some more information on jackson as a person and sort of delves deeper into his experiences. 
> 
> i am going through a weird twenty one pilots phase with this fic (the trench album is like the soundtrack at this point) and i listened to trees a lot while writing this. so give it a listen if you've never heard it. 
> 
> i am working on the next substantial chapter though so please stay tuned lmao 
> 
> not beta read because i do not care about anything + additional warnings in the end notes

  
  


**Interlude - Ivy League**

“And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear, millions of mischiefs.”

  
  
  


Jackson always wanted to be an astronaut. 

He was given everything he could have ever wanted. His room was space themed; glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling, model planets strung along the beams supporting the frame of his bed. He had UFO sheets and various alien-related toys. He wanted to be an astronaut. 

He is adopted.

It takes him a long time to come to terms with that. It hurts. He has nightmares of faceless people leaving him behind, a tall spindly man and a wiry haired woman cooing at him in a way that feels terrifying. He wants to know why they didn’t want him. When he gets older, he no longer scratches his height on the threshold of his closet, the blue starry walls transform into off-white blank slates. The posters of planets leave small holes in the wall from multicolored tacks that his mom - Meredith, he never calls her mom now - pays someone to plaster over. When he gets older, Jackson finds himself no longer wishing to be an astronaut. He just wants to be good enough.

In ninth grade, he tries out for lacrosse and he doesn’t make it on the varsity team, his name is instead scrawled in sloppy letters on the JV roster. He comes home with a crooked grin and spends the night in the ER with a broken arm that he loyally tells the doctor he got from tripping down the stairs. He makes the varsity captain slot when he tries out the next year, his arm still throbbing when he thinks about it. 

He has to turn into someone he is not. He has to create two different faces, maintain a tiring duplicity. At home he cannot be who he is at school. He can’t be himself anywhere. In his lit class they read snippets of _Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde_. Jackson knows all about the duality of man.

  
  


x

  
  


Lydia Martin is the prettiest girl he has ever seen and she won’t even give him the time of day. 

He changes his style and plays around with his hair - for the first time putting a genuine effort into his appearance. Lydia never fixes her eyes on him longer than necessary, blowing unimpressed bubbles with her gum before snapping her gaze back to the front of the classroom. He studies, actually tries to do better in math in an attempt at garnering her praise. It never comes. 

They sleep together, though. Jackson’s first everything - first choice, first kiss, first time, first prom date. 

Lydia is a perfectionist, which works for him. There has never been an aspect of Jackson’s life not controlled by another person. She shows him what clothes to wear, how to part his hair so he doesn’t _look like you got dressed and used a comb in the dark, Jackson, god, you look ridiculous_. 

She goes to all of his lacrosse games, the only familiar face recurring in the stands. David and Meredith stopped coming when they stopped being impressed by it. Sometimes Lydia has signs emblazoned with chunky glitter signifying his number. She always wears his practice jersey. It’s nice. It makes him feel something warm in his chest. It isn’t love, he stopped thinking of love after he found out he was adopted. But it makes him feel something. Makes him want to start thinking of love. 

Lydia helps him, too. She makes color coded flashcards and shares her notes from precalc with him and shows him her highlighting system to make navigating through long passages of textbook information easier. He slowly climbs up until he is third in their class, Lydia remaining in her spot at the top. She makes him feel smart, makes him feel like he isn’t just a waste of space.

She frowns at his bruises but never makes him tell her. She buys him a tube of concealer and keeps an extra in her bathroom’s medicine cabinet. She keeps ice packs in her freezer and a first aid kit under her bed. She does more for him than she knows. He thinks about love. 

Senior year, he gets tackled at an away game. The guy is much bigger than him, but Jackson didn’t even see him coming. He hits the field at the wrong angle, his head colliding with the grass while his leg snaps beneath him. It hurts worse than when he got his arm broken. He thinks he screams. If he doesn’t, he certainly wants to. 

Meredith comes to the hospital. She stands silent beside the bed and it all feels painfully similar to the night they were here for his arm. He can’t even look at her. 

When the doctor says he can’t play lacrosse, he zones out. 

Without lacrosse, he is nothing. 

Without lacrosse he will never be good enough. 

That night he thinks about it. Death. It could all be over. He just has to stop being a fucking coward. He can never do anything right, but he could do this. What is he good for if he doesn’t have lacrosse?

He is going to do it. He is. But Lydia visits him. The only thing that stood between him and death that night was Lydia Martin. 

She is bare-faced and dressed in comfy clothing - a sweatshirt and pajama shorts with math symbols on them. She does her homework for AP Physics at the foot of his bed and absently talks about the new company her father just bought. Jackson idly watches her employ the highlighter method, feeling a smile tug at his lips at the sheer familiarity of it. He thinks of love and he thinks about how Lydia will never know that he’d intended to die. He wants to laugh thinking about it: Lydia Martin, the only thing stronger than death. 

The girl who was second in their class moves away - she is from a military family and her dad got stationed somewhere else. Jackson bumps up to number two and graduates salutatorian. 

He gets accepted into Harvard and Lydia gets accepted into Stanford. 

He is going to miss her. He _does_ miss her. They are on opposite sides of the country and he misses her because she was his first. His first heartbreak. 

  
  


x

  
  


Harvard Law kicks his ass but he likes it. He likes how hard it is, he likes that he actually has to try and that people are impressed with him for trying. He likes going to court and providing defense, he likes finding the loopholes. He is good at it. Really good at it. Good enough.

He graduates in the top ten of his graduating class. David and Meredith aren’t there. 

He gets a job at a firm in New York. New York City is so much more than Beacon Hills, he feels different in a good way. He hooks up with a few people here and there - but he is married to his work. He put too much into it to be distracted. 

While he is at the DA’s office awaiting some paperwork - he gets a call. David is dead. 

His first thought is _good riddance._ His second thought is _I have now lost two fathers who didn't want me._ He gets shitfaced and takes personal leave from work, flying back to Beacon Hills to attend the funeral of a man he didn’t even really know. 

There is a saying - he doesn’t know it exactly - but it is something along the lines of: _if you leave your hometown and later come back, you will be stuck there until you die._ He can feel it in his bones, he knows he is never leaving again. 

Lydia has a law firm right there in Beacon Hills. It is one of the older buildings near the town park. All sleek marble pillars and shiny tiled floors. She looks how he remembers, more put-together than everyone around her, eyes cold and unrelenting while she exudes an aura of superiority. 

She doesn’t make his heart race like he thought she might. 

He was a kid. He thought him loving her would, by association, morph into him loving himself. You don’t realize that those kinds of things don’t work out until you’re an adult. 

He asks her if he can work alongside her. She laughs in his face. But, she brings him into her office - all bay windows and polished wood - and extends to him a crisp business card pinched between ruby red nails. 

It just says _Peter Hale - Talent Scout_ with an address at the bottom. No phone number or email. 

He isn’t sure what he expected - well, he knows exactly what he expected. He expected an older, possibly middle-aged, balding man who hates his life, wasting away while getting rich off of others’ talent. Though, he wasn’t that far off. 

Peter Hale cackles maniacally at him, looking over the resumé Jackson brought with a mockingly arched brow.

He sets the paper on his desk and peers up at Jackson. “Harvard, huh?”

He nods but remains silent.

Jackson commends himself for not freaking out when Peter flashes red eyes at him, his fingers becoming claws, teeth becoming fangs. Honestly, it makes sense in some ways. 

Peter tells him he gets his own bedroom at The Den, and that he will talk with Lydia about getting him some sort of pseudo-office set up to keep people off their trail. 

“Wait,” Jackson backtracks, “you want me to do things that are illegal?”

Peter fixes him with a bored look. “You get _not guilty_ verdicts for murderers and now you are worried about morality?”

His mouth clicks shut. He has nothing to say to that. 

He spends the next week preparing for his new lifestyle.

  
  


x

  
  


He is not prepared for Stiles Stilinski. 

The spark makes him feel like he is in high school all over again, always struggling to prove his worth. The kid is nineteen - and just that - a _kid_. Jackson is twenty-five, on the verge of his next birthday, and he cannot explain why he feels the need to prove himself to some glorified, street-scum pyromaniac. 

Stiles is smart, though. Smarter than Jackson is willing to give him credit for. He is analytical - he knows how to piece things together and think things through. It’s almost impressive. He is also easy on the eyes, tall and lean but obviously well-muscled. Stiles’ hair is usually buzzed, but right now it is just a tad longer than he normally allows it to grow. Jackson isn’t the only one who finds the man attractive, he sees Derek falter in his pull ups a time or two whenever Stiles lights up his hands or bends to retrieve something from his duffel bag. 

Over the next two years, Jackson settles into his role. He has a good thing going. He actually kind of likes it here.

Stiles enjoys arguing with Jackson as though he’s the one who went to law school rather than the other way around. He always counters Jackson or tries to discredit him. 

“It’s better to hear it from a nobody like me than from the bigshots in the courtroom.”

“You’re not a nobody,” Jackson snaps, but he realizes too late that it isn’t an insult. 

Stiles blinks at him, his expression smoothed over in surprise before his eyes harden and a smirk curls at his lips. “Careful, Jackson. With talk like that, someone might think you like me.”

He isn’t sure how it happened. Isn’t sure when glaring at each other morphed into holding one another’s gaze for too long, Stiles heatedly refusing to look away first. When his eyes became perpetually glued to the younger man’s lips. When he found himself wishing for Stiles to talk - to ramble about nothing at all rather than sit in silence with him, left to his own thoughts. 

He isn’t sure who moved in first. All he knows is one second they are across the room from each other, Stiles draped over a decorative chair in Jackson’s office like he belongs there while Jackson looks over paperwork for Peter. The next moment, Stiles is seated on the edge of the desk with Jackson between his legs, digging fingernails into his biceps and licking hot into his mouth. 

Stiles becomes somewhat of a permanent fixture, then. If he was always around before, he is certainly everywhere now. Jackson’s sheets smell like him and pretty soon his nightstand holds a couple of Stiles’ books and whenever Jackson is looking for his favorite tie, he knows to check through Stiles’ room for it. Stiles walks around on their days off in Jackson’s clothes and teases him constantly about his fancy car. It almost feels like they are dating. 

But, they aren’t dating. 

One night, when Jackson rolls over, boneless and sweaty, breathing hard, Stiles rests his cheek on his forearm where his arms are folded and smiles. “You know, you can sleep with other people if you want.”

Jackson clears his throat and raises his eyebrows. “Are you sleeping with other people?”

Stiles rolls his eyes, but it’s lazy and unheated. His face is still sloping soft. “No. But I could. And you could too.”

Stiles never tries to control him. Stiles has allowed him more freedom with whatever it is they are doing than anyone in Jackson's life has ever given him before. It makes him feel like a person, like maybe what he thinks matters. Like maybe he is allowed to feel things for himself rather than everyone telling him how to be, what to be, who to be. 

“I don’t want to sleep with other people,” Jackson says, trying not to frown. It’s the closest he has ever come to telling someone what he wants. He keeps himself from letting it all out, restrains himself from saying that he wants Stiles to want him, only him. That he wants to date and be grossly affectionate. But, Stiles doesn’t want to be wanted and Jackson is too much of a fucking coward to tell him how he feels. 

Stiles shakes his head. “I don’t either. But, when you do want to, you can. That’s all I’m saying.” 

With that, he rolls over. A clear dismissal. 

Jackson waits until he is sure Stiles is asleep to plant a kiss on the back of his neck. 

  
  


x

  
  


Derek isn’t a problem, per se. But, he could be. 

Jackson knows that Stiles is...a lot. He is funny, and confident, and completely comfortable in his own skin. He gives off self-assurance in waves and when he walks he knows exactly where he intends to step. He is never afraid to speak his mind, even fighting with Peter when they are all too scared to pipe up. 

It’s alarmingly easy to fall for a person like Stiles.

When they are curled around each other at night, when Stiles snaps at Derek, when he goes back and forth with Erica, when he shoots Jackson secret smiles that make his chest feel hot - Jackson thinks about love. 

Peter uses them all - they are means to an end. Peter doesn’t _care_ about any of them, and they all know that. Jackson knows he can’t do this forever, he doesn’t want to. He thought he was happy with being here, content with being stuck in Beacon Hills for the rest of his life. But, he wants something _more_. Something bigger. He wants to show Stiles what New York City looks like when the sun goes down. He wants to pick out home décor with him and do normal things like pay rent and go grocery shopping and walk aimlessly through town. They can’t do that here, they can _never_ do that here. 

Stiles was his first, too. The first to make Jackson feel like a person. The first to know when to back off instead of push. The first to make him want for more, to strive to be better.

Stiles deserves a life. 

More and more lately, Jackson finds himself thinking about love. 

He talks to Lydia. There has to be a way out. He can’t be trapped here forever. He can't. 

They went to high school with Matt Daehler. He was a photographer for the yearbook, got in trouble a time or two for being a fucking creep. But, he has connections. Jackson burns the paper Lydia wrote Daehler's number on after he calls it and sets up a meeting. 

He is so tired of everything just being good enough. 

The next time he sleeps with Stiles, he takes his time. Tries to pour everything into it. Slow and soft where he is normally unrelenting and rough, kissing gently where he usually bites. The entire time, he thinks about love.

When he falls asleep, he dreams that he is in outer space. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> implied but nongraphic child abuse
> 
> suicidal ideation but no suicide / nongraphic


	5. act iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so uh yeah kdhfkdhgjhsh um i do not know what to say about this lmao
> 
> quick sidenote - twenty one pilots' trench album has kind of changed my life in regards to this fic. i have never been a fan of them before and then boom i now listen to their music in a borderline unhealthy capacity. the songs i listen to the most are [jumpsuit](https://open.spotify.com/track/1E1uGhNdBe6Dddbgs2KqtZ?si=NcNaSWU7S4qMTn1KTpqiIw), [pet cheetah](https://open.spotify.com/track/7daBwTiPNOVgoMUG4SICgh?si=MeBkGPOuRXyv8J6pF56uiA), [nico and the niners](https://open.spotify.com/track/5SehvGGC53A7SZKCLXQcyt?si=yaR3cnC-QW-0bBHLxTIhVQ), [bandito](https://open.spotify.com/track/5INKIG4QNuD4xq7qZcfPzp?si=PqOMy-XfSTOXB6O40B72jA), and [chlorine](https://open.spotify.com/track/23OXdR7YuUBVWh5hSnYJau?si=JN-wBj7iTXyF1ARvHwZ73w)
> 
> just a fair warning, i do not know anything about firearms or fighting or whatever aside from some very quick and very surface-level google searches. so, uh, pls do not use any fight scenes in this fic as reliable learning resources for such things 
> 
> this chapter took me a second and i didn't really get to include everything i wanted in it but oh well who cares. i can confidently say that the next chapter might take me a while to finish and post because i work basically every day for the next two weeks rip. maybe i will do the background character interludes every other chapter so i can buy myself some time. i am honestly just doing this on the fly. all info about the kanima was pulled basically straight from the teen wolf wiki and there is a brief smut scene with a nameless omc because i felt like it 
> 
> more warnings in the end notes and not beta read because typos add flavor

**Act III – Metamorphosis**

“Men at some time are masters of their fates[.]”

Peter taught Stiles two invaluable things in his first year with The Pack: how to fuck like it’s going out of style and who to avoid if you enjoy living comfortably. For the last one, Peter only had three names – Hunters, Deucalion, and significant others.

Peter met Deucalion when they were both young and upcoming twenty-somethings drunk on newfound power. They are far more alike than they are different, which is precisely what makes them despise each other. Stiles had never personally met the man, but his stint on the streets produced his name in flashing lights a time or two. They called him _King Cobra_ , but from what Stiles had heard, the man was quite the charmer. He hosted extravagant white-collar pill parties, handing out bottles that rattled like the decades-old washing machine in his childhood home. The spark had gotten his hands on a party favor once before, pulled strings like a puppeteer for the opportunity to pocket some of what made Deucalion richer than sin. Stiles swallowed his very first bar of xanax courtesy of the man’s goodie bags, so he supposes they are connected in some peculiar, virginal way.

He saw him in passing just once. Stiles was sixteen, just a few odd weeks before his seventeenth birthday, and he had been slipping between sweaty bodies at the closest supernatural speakeasy. He was looking for a gun-for-hire named Braeden to get some guys off his back quick and simple. He was scanning the bar when he slammed into a man who smelled like gunpowder and Big Red. He’d caught Stiles by the biceps to right him, chuckling smooth and deep like Stiles had told him a joke rather than shoulder-check him. He had a heavy cane grasped in one hand, pushed flush against the side of Stiles’ body where he was holding him. The grip of it sparkled beneath the lights - an intricate silver cobra’s head, tongue lolled out with emerald eyes. Stiles had dragged his gaze from the cane to the man’s face, shocked to be met with large, black-rimmed sunglasses. He took in the suit, the cane, the diamond wrist-watch, the bulge of a gun at his hip - _Deucalion_.

“I’m sorry,” Stiles apologized around a polite smile. The man was blind, but everyone knows he has eyes everywhere.

His lips tugged up into a charming half smile, it had still managed to look predatory. Hungry. Stiles wasn’t prepared for the accent. “You smell deliciously of magic, little one.”

Stiles forced himself to laugh awkwardly, curled his shoulders and aimed for bashful, cute, sweet - anything opposite of his carefully crafted street persona. You don’t want to get recognized by men like Deucalion.

“I think I have a spark? At least that’s what this one guy told me, I don’t know a lot about that stuff,” he said cutely, shrugging so he knew that Deucalion could physically feel his youth, his insignificance.

“You must know enough about _that stuff_ to be so readily allowed into my speakeasy.”

Stiles forced his heartbeat to pound steadily while he laughed, “Oh, I came here with a friend. She’s a,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “ _werewolf._ ”

Deucalion laughed that same deep laugh and Stiles refused to feel relieved. “Is that so?”

Stiles nodded but before Deucalion could monopolize his time further, a man in a crisp suit appeared next to him. “Sir, we’ve got a problem with tonight’s,” he looked at Stiles with a grimace, “transaction.”

Deucalion lifted his lips in an unhappy sneer before schooling it back into his charming smile. “It was nice to meet you, baby mage.”

Stiles waited until he’d been gone for several minutes to make an exit. He left without finding Braeden.

He didn’t find out until much later, a year or two into his time with The Pack, that Peter had been the one to blind Deucalion. The man had gouged his eyes out, speared them on sharp claws in the midst of a rage-filled dispute. This was when Peter was first venturing into the gang business, when assembling The Pack was more of a passing thought than a pursuit of ambition. Stiles supposes the gang is the only reason Peter is still alive while Deucalion lives day to day sightless by his hands - he has armor. Deucalion’s too smart to initiate a gang war over spilled milk - or gouged eyes - and Peter is too smart to leave The Den unaccompanied.

But, sitting cross-legged beside Derek while Peter paces the length of the dining room is unsettling. Erica and Boyd are shoulder to shoulder, leaned along the wall while Isaac hangs off of the door frame. Peter seems truly rattled, upset, _afraid_. Peter fears nothing, it’s his brand. He fucks kids and kills people he deems replaceable and peddles drugs and distributes blood money to a gang of criminals he employs to do the same things. Peter doesn’t _pace_ \- yet here they all are.

“So, Daehler worked for Deucalion - the kid was useless. Deucalion took Jackson’s body, I thought we hated the cocky bastard. _You_ killed him.”

Isaac always says shit like this to Peter, monotone and bored and without trepidation. Stiles thinks Peter would have killed him ten times over if he weren’t so valuable.

Peter grips the wooden back of a dining chair and it cracks to splinters in his hold. “That _cocky bastard_ agreed to becoming a kanima so he could hide away in London. Deucalion didn’t take Jackson’s _corpse_ , he took his fucking _cocoon_.”

Isaac rolls his eyes. “So, what, they have Jackson’s lizard body. Why do we care?”

Peter’s eyes bleed red like fire. The look he aims at Isaac is scorching, it burns Stiles by association, his hands tingle. His voice is filtered through clenched teeth, words sharp and stinging like acid. “Isaac, come here.”

Isaac doesn’t flinch, just strides to a stop in front of Peter. The man unpockets a vial with a hand wracked by anger-tremors. He pierces the top with a quivering claw and in a flash he has Isaac by the jaw, drip drip dripping one, two, three drops between the ‘wolf’s puckered lips. Stiles’ eyes track the dip of his adam’s apple on the strained swallow. The seconds after pass in deadly silence. Two seconds, five seconds, seven seconds - Isaac hits the floor, dead weight. Peter stares down at him, his eyes are still red but they are no longer burning, they’re ice cold.

“Deucalion doesn’t have a _lizard’s body_ , Isaac. He has a means of mass-producing paralytic venom.” Peter swoops to a graceful bend, arranging Isaac’s arms so they’re spread out at his sides, delivering an invisible crucifixion. He steps back and unholsters his gun. Stiles and The Pack wince in surprise as Peter fires two shots, one in each of Isaac’s knees. “Kanima venom slows healing, courtesy of the paralyzing agent. It won’t wear off for hours.” Peter rehomes his weapon and says dully, “For your sake, Isaac, I hope this experience humbles you. The next time you speak out of turn, I’ll simply rip out your tongue.”

To the tune of Isaac’s low groans, Peter turns to look at them.

“Stiles,” he barks. “I want you scouring every fucking magic book you know of. I want counteractive runes, spells - anything that reduces the effects of the venom. Use whatever you need for research - I want you to be the goddamn kanima expert come this time tomorrow. I’ll reimburse you on any strenuous purchases.”

Stiles nods dutifully and Peter turns to Derek. “I want you to keep your ears alert - I want you tracking every word spoken of Deucalion and his men to its source - whether you’re at The Nemeton, on the street, or fucking a stranger, am I clear?”

Derek flashes his eyes and tilts his throat.

He tells Boyd and Erica to scout his clubs, fish for information but not obviously. He wants Boyd to man the bar, pull clues from drunk customers. He wants Erica at the door, listening to the conversation on the outside while guests wait to get in, catalogue unfamiliar and suspicious faces. They each flicker blue eyes at their Alpha.

He ignores Isaac.

That’s that.

x

The worst part of initiation was what Peter called _mental strength exercises_. 

Once a week, he would bind Stiles to a chair in the training room - sometimes with Derek there, sometimes alone - and he would sink his claws into the skin at the base of Stiles' neck and force him to relive different things over and over again. 

Stiles would scream until his throat was sore. 

He watched his mother die forty-three times. 

His father yelled at him, yelled that Stiles killed her, that Stiles was killing him. Stiles dodged the liquor bottle thirty-two times. 

During his time on the streets, some nameless junkie stabbed him twice in the side of his abdomen. It was the worst physical pain he had ever felt before joining The Pack. Peter made him feel it more times than he can count. 

Eventually, though, he didn't scream. It didn't hurt anymore. His mother died in front of him and he felt nothing. His father threw the bottle at him and he evaded it, smiling. He got stabbed and instead of doubling over in pain, he laughed. 

On the last day, Peter congratulated him. "You are stronger now. Things only hurt you if you let them, Stiles."

At night when he struggles to sleep, he thinks about it. He will never forgive Peter for stripping away his humanity.

x

Stiles is still shaking from killing Daehler.

He didn’t get to do nearly as much as he wanted to. He’d fantasized about hours of torture, stripping the man of all will to live until he was nothing but whimpers and heaving breaths.

He wanted to break his jaw, retaliation for how he’d gripped at Stiles’. He wanted to lay a palm across Daehler’s neck and set it up in flames, revenge for the hickeys he’d bitten into the skin that adorned Stiles’ throat.

He is shaking from killing Daehler, but not because he’s satisfied. He’s shaking because he is _angry_ , _hurt_ , _tired_. Daehler didn’t feel his pain, he went out laughing. He got the last word. He didn’t pay for what he did and now Stiles feels robbed.

He sinks onto the edge of his mattress and stares at the wall, fisting his hands into the thighs of his pants to dissuade their trembling. He looks at the pill bottles lining his nightstand beside a pack of cigarettes, the baggies of powder strewn along his desk, the bongs standing tall on his shelf. He has never felt like this before - deprived. He has never felt a hurt that couldn’t be combated by a capsule or a toke or a needle. For once, he is at a loss.

When he was a kid, his mom sang. She sang all the time, every kind of song. But she always loved Jimi Hendrix. She hummed _Purple Haze_ when she did dishes and jumped around the living room doing air guitar to _Voodoo Child_ while Stiles stood on the toes of his dad’s boots as the man danced beside her. She sang all of his songs - but her favorite was _All Along the Watchtower._ Whenever Stiles had a nightmare or a bad day at school, she’d hug him close and sing softly into his ear - rocking them back and forth as though he were still a baby.

He brings his knees up and rests his head between them, circling his arms around until his hands are fisted in the fabric covering his shins. He takes a shaky breath and whispers along with her voice in his memory - _there’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief_. He doesn’t know if he is singing the full song, or just repeating the same line over and over. He can’t really hear anything over the pounding of his heart, much less his own thoughts. The bone-deep _ache_ of feeling that he has been stripped of something is settling heavy in his marrow, he feels like he can’t move from the weight of it.

The knock on his door sounds through the quiet like a gunshot - he thinks of Isaac. He wonders how much time has passed, if the man is still paralyzed on the dining room floor, if it has only been minutes rather than hours, years, centuries.

He stays in place but molds his magic around the threshold, dropping the wards. He knows it’s Derek from the quiet surety of his footfalls, no hesitation. The ‘wolf takes one, two, three steps in before halting. Stiles lifts his head, addressing the wall of windows in front of him, inquiring the swaying trees rather than the man behind him. “How may I be of service this evening?”

Derek comes to stand in front of him, obscuring his view of the trees that look almost gray in the beam of the moon. He has the Hale bestiary gripped in his right hand - most likely sent by Peter. His scowl makes Stiles curl his lips to mirror him, not in the mood.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks gruffly, ever the picture of social grace.

Stiles laughs, it sounds ugly to his own ears. “Would you like a list?”

“Cut the shit, Stiles. Better me than Peter.”

Stiles tilts his head, he supposes Derek has a point. Peter makes a show of taking Stiles’ problems and crushing them beneath his mocking heel.

“I normally get high off the kill,” he says to the space over Derek’s shoulder. “What happened tonight with Daehler feels like a bad trip.”

Derek tosses the leather-bound book on Stiles’ mattress, it bounces slightly. The ‘wolf crosses his arms over his chest, which makes Stiles want to laugh, what use does Derek have being defensive right now?

“How so?” he demands.

Stiles drags his eyes to bore right into Derek’s. “Daehler didn’t pay. I had plans to make him—” he curls his lip and takes a breath, “I just wanted him to suffer.”

Derek’s eyes jump along his face, looking at his eyes, nose, mouth, eyes again. “It looked to me like he paid.”

Stiles shrugs and shifts his gaze back to the glare of the overhead light on the windowpane. “Well, he didn’t meet my price.”

“He must have really fucked with you,” he says, obviously fishing for details.

Stiles feels his lips twist into something sharp, he looks back to Derek. “What, you want fantasy fuel or something?”

Derek’s eyes blaze and his mouth tugs down in a grimace. That’s more like it. Before he opens his mouth, Stiles decides he’s feeling low enough to go in for the kill.

“You want to hear about everything he did to me? You want to hug it out and tell me about Kate?”

“I know what you’re fucking doing. Don’t try to rile me because you can’t admit that something hurt you.”

“You’re right. Daehler hurt me and I gave him a slap on the wrist before I burned him alive. He laughed like it was all in good fun and I—” Stiles snaps his teeth together, grits them until his molars grind against one another. He imagines tiny white particles of enamel flaking off, sticking to his tongue, gritting against his esophagus when he swallows.

He clears his throat and releases one fist from his pant leg to grip the bestiary. He shakes it at Derek. “Thank you for the delivery. You can go now.”

“Stiles.”

“What? Do you want to compare bra sizes and contemplate school crushes? For fuck’s sake, I don’t need you to be my fucking shrink.”

Derek clenches his jaw and leaves. Storms out like Stiles is the bane of his existence. In some ways, he supposes he is. He slams the door when Derek passes the threshold and replaces his wards, this time they’ll shock anyone who knocks.

x

_**Beast: Kanima** _

_**Entry by Thomas Hale, Alpha, 1937.** _

__

_**Like the wolf, its power is greatest at the moon’s peak.** _

_**Like the wolf, the Kanima is a social creature but where the wolf seeks a pack the Kanima seeks a master.** _

_**The Kanima, a weapon of vengeance, is used to carry out the bidding of its master. The Kanima was once used by a South American priest who took it upon himself to rid his village of all murderers. The bond between master and servant grew stronger until the will of the master became that of the Kanima's and whomever the priest deemed unworthy, the Kanima served his vengeance.** _

__

_**Physical Traits:**_

_**The Kanima is roughly the size of an average human male, covered in scale, yellow eyes with slits, and can climb up walls like some varieties of lizards.** _

_**It has a long prehensile tail and long claws that secrete venom that can paralyze victims for hours. It seems to heal very quickly.** _

__

_**Weaknesses:**_

_**Yellow Wolfsbane can bring a Kanima down more easily than regular wolfsbane.** _

_**When the Kanima is not in control, the human half is susceptible to its own venom and other dangers such as tranquilizers and wolfsbane.** _

_**The Kanima fears what its master fears.** _

__

_**Enhanced Stage (Metamorphosis):** _

_**The Kanima can become larger and more powerful. To achieve this next stage, the Kanima creates a clear, viscous cocoon from its claws and lies in a deep sleep. During this process, it develops wings, becomes more ferocious, and has a spiked tail.** _

__

__

x

Acquiring yellow wolfsbane is not all it’s cracked up to be. Especially under Peter’s time constraints. Stiles has to call in a few favors to some connections he met through Deaton.

He drops fifteen-hundred on three bottles chock full of it, just in case. If he texts Peter that it cost over three grand, well, that’s for him to know.

He consults the mages he purchases it off of for the best ways to utilize it - spells, poisons, bombs - he wants to know every way it can be employed to harm something like, let’s say, a kanima. He gets more or less the same answer in different variations – powder it for maximum efficiency, it can be mixed with the tiniest hint of lemon balm to disguise the scent. The first woman he spoke with, a frail old thing thrumming with ancient power, told him the best way to administer it is to cup it within his hands and blow it onto the monster, preferably in their face. He isn’t sure how well that could be carried out under the pressure of life-or-death circumstances, but he figures that bridge can be crossed when they come to it. If they come to it.

Derek has been forcefully ignoring Stiles since he visited him last night, all rigid posture and meaningful scowls and childish silent treatment. Stiles doesn’t really give a fuck, boo-hoo Derek is angry because Stiles wouldn’t allow himself to be coddled.

This morning, when Stiles entered Peter’s office to tell him he was running an errand, Derek was sitting stiffly in one of his velvet chairs. He pointedly looked Stiles up and down with distaste and Stiles leveled him with flat eyes that he hoped conveyed _cry me a river and drown in it_.

Due to his magic, Stiles has always believed he was connected intrinsically to the universe. He feels like something in his chest burns hot and bright, composed of the same energy that makes stars. He looks up at night and he sees pieces of himself everywhere. Conversely, he feels that, though they are linked, the universe does not give one single ever-loving fuck about him nor his wellbeing. This is supported by the fact that, whenever things are not going well for Stiles, they inevitably become worse.

Exiting the last shop, ingredients pocketed and plans forming, Stiles has one more errand he has to carry out. There is a book he read back when he was first becoming familiar with his spark, detailing things like plants and creatures. It was rudimentary, basic in the way he needed at the time, so he quickly evolved from it. Therefore, when he’d high-tailed it to The Den, he left it behind.

Of course, when things are already going so swimmingly, Stiles has to traipse around his childhood home. Seriously, _fuck_ the universe.

The house is simultaneously exactly how he remembers it and unrecognizable. Sure, he comes here every few odd months to double check the wards he has in place to protect a man Stiles isn’t sure even wants him alive, but he never lets his gaze linger or his eyes catalogue the details. Standing here, in the empty driveway, he feels like he is standing outside of himself, trapped behind the upstairs window looking down.

Stiles doesn’t know the boy who used to live here. He hasn’t for a while. The boy who broke his leg in the sycamore that always tapped ominously on the pane of his window after he’d watched a scary movie. The boy who lost his front tooth and buried it in the back yard because he didn’t want the tooth fairy to come into his room (there were two crumpled dollar bills beneath his pillow the next morning anyway - he didn’t sleep in his own bed for two days). The boy who decorated his bike with stickers of stormtroopers and teenage mutant ninja turtles, who flashed big eyes and a gap-toothed grin at his father that resulted in an exciting ride around the neighborhood in the man’s cruiser.

Stiles doesn’t know him. Thinking of him makes something itch in the deep corners of his mind, memories turned prickly and unwelcome.

Stiles does recall the man who used to live here. The man who cooked and cleaned and took care of the dead-eyed deputy who sought refuge in Jack Daniels and passed out on the couch and shuffled around the kitchen during the odd hours of the morning. He knows the kid who became a parent in the absence of his own, a kid who grew up too fast and went downhill even faster.

The boy who lived here is buried beneath a tombstone that reads _Claudia Stilinski_ \- he died with her and Stiles is realizing that he never really got to mourn him.

Stiles wants to hate his father, and on most days he thinks he does. It’s easy to pop a pill or take a life - resenting John Stilinski is easier than introspection, it’s easier than blaming himself.

But looking at the house, taking in the crooked metal numbers on the outermost porch beam, Stiles feels something constricting like a serpent curl around the base of his chest. The two in one-two-nine is missing, a sun-cooked silhouette with a grimy outline left in its place. The nine is crooked, but it has always been that way. The top-most step to the body of the porch deck is still uneven, the bottom one splintered slightly on the far-left side. The paint on the siding is noticeably dirty, chipping in some places. The lawn looks as though it has been mowed recently, but there are stubborn patches of taller grass cropped up sparsely throughout the yard.

He shakes his head and climbs up to the front door, pointedly keeping his eyes aimed forward. He needs to get his shit and leave before his dad stops by or someone drives past and reports a mysterious lurker to the police. He drops his wards with little effort and slips through the front door. Seeing the interior is harder than seeing the exterior. Stiles makes a beeline to the stairs, ignoring the threshold to the kitchen that is marked with heights up to five-foot-four. He ignores the fact that his brain automatically signals for his right foot to skip over the third to last step from the top - the one that creaks loudly, the one he always tip-toed around so as not to wake his dad after a long shift. He ignores the bathroom door that still has the shadow of permanent marker etched into it from when Stiles learned through his mother’s laughter and his father’s reluctantly exasperated smile that everything is not a canvas.

His room is the icing on the cake, really. Band posters and movie promos litter the walls in crooked testaments to a time where Stiles could really enjoy those things. There are dog-eared, well-worn comics stacked in a spiral by the dresser that has a few drawers pulled halfway open. He goes straight for his bed and takes a deep breath, holding his hands palm-down toward it. The air hums lightly and the box he hid with every ounce of magic he could spare comes sliding out.

He rifles past the jars of herbs that he’d harvested himself - things he was so certain were rare and hard to come by that he later realized, upon becoming stronger, that he just didn’t have the right connections to obtain them easily. He pockets one chunk of lapis he’d cherished during a stint where he’d wanted to try reaching out to his ancestors. All of the miscellaneous things in this box were important to him in one way or another - but moving to The Den wasn’t like relocating to a college dorm or moving into his first apartment, so he’d had to pack light. He finds the book he came for. He carefully lifts it, dodging the other contents, and freezes at what was beneath it. It’s a photo, the three of them. His father has his head turned, looking fondly at his mother, who is making a funny face to Stiles’ red laughing one. He remembers looking at this, staring down at it night after night. Wondering if he thought hard enough he could remember what it felt like to be that carefree.

He swallows past the lump in his throat and tucks the photo in the middle of the book before moving to stand. He casts a cursory glance around the room one last time before making his way back down the stairs and through the front door. He replaces the wards efficiently and remembers that he walked here from the shops since he had no pressing matters to rush for. He sighs, a full body thing that forces him to realize just how tired he is. He reaches into his pocket for his phone and dials Isaac. He answers after five rings.

“I was hoping you died,” it’s tinny, but the drawl is clear.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “You and me both. Are you busy?”

“That depends - what do you need?”

Stiles looks around, eyes tracking the mom van that passes on the street. “I need a ride back to base.”

“I’m with Boyd right now following a lead on Deucalion. I can call and get you a ride.”

Stiles blows his cheeks out and tilts his head to look up at the sky. “Whatever you need to do, just hurry. I’m outside on Woodbine, I feel like the Homeowner’s Association is going to arrive any second to remove me for upsetting the aesthetic.”

Isaac huffs a laugh and gives an affirmative. “Give me a minute and I’ll have a car sent your way.”

“Thanks a ton, Reap’. If you weren’t you, I’d suck your dick,” Stiles says amiably.

The line clicks with Isaac’s abrupt hang up. Stiles laughs to himself and sinks down onto the bottom porch step, flipping through his book. He quickly finds the section on wolfsbane and flicks to the pages detailing the strain he just picked up. He knows what it does, obviously, but this particular book details what it can be mixed with and spelled with for maximum effectiveness. There’s no redo on killing a kanima, you either get it on the first try or you die unsuccessful. One attempt.

Stiles already has all of the ingredients it can be combined with, which is one relieving thing to crop up out of a truly shitty day. He’s reading the side-effects of infusing magic with it when tires crunch loudly against asphalt, disrupting the quiet that had blanketed the neighborhood.

Stiles sees the front end of the Camaro and groans. He aims a quick middle finger to the sinking sun because, really, _fuck_ _the universe_.

The passenger side window slides down slowly with a mechanical _shkrrrr_ and Stiles is pleasantly surprised to see a head of blonde curls and wicked eyes hidden behind cherry red sunglasses.

Stiles gets to his feet and strides over, silently apologizing to the universe. He hops gracefully into the front seat and wonders aloud, “How the fuck did you manage to get Derek’s car?”

Erica smiles evilly at him, bubblegum tucked between her front teeth. She stretches it with the point of her tongue and blows a bubble that sways lightly in the current from the air vent.

“What Derek doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she slides the glasses down to reveal thick eyeliner and bright irises, “ _much_."

Stiles rests his head back against the headrest and laughs. Erica pulls into the driveway and reverses, going back the way she came.

“Besides, the keys were _right there_ on the hook. Even a woman of my morals couldn’t resist such blatant temptation. Also, Derek used all the hot water this morning so I wanted to fuck with him.”

Stiles tilts his head to look at her, watching her jaw shift as she chews her gum, red lips glistening. Erica is probably the closest thing he has to a friend in this life. They talk about Stiles’ hookups and Erica comes to him about Boyd and her concerns of their exclusivity. Stiles tells her when she has lipstick on her teeth and adjusts her bra straps and watches shitty reality TV with her on her bad days. She scratches her fingertips against his scalp in the way that he likes when they lay on the couch and she offers sex tips when he feels bored. He trusts her, like the rest of his ragtag team, to have his back in a fight. But, more than that, he trusts her to listen, which is more than he can say for anyone else at The Den.

“So, Isaac is on recon with Boyd. I take it Peter isn’t pissed anymore?”

Erica shakes her head. “Oh, he’s pissed. But, you know Peter - he holds a grudge until he needs you. He spewed some bullshit about setting an example and no hard feelings. I mean, we all know how much he needs Isaac on the team, so.”

She leaves it hanging and Stiles nods along. She drums her fingers against the steering wheel. She angles her face toward him, eyes still on the road. “So, what’s up with you? You smell - sad. You’re never sad.”

Stiles shrugs one shoulder, it makes a quiet noise against the seat. “I’m not sad, just - I don’t know. That was my old house.”

Her fingers stop. “No shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Bad memories?”

Stiles looks out the window. “Not all of them.”

Erica nods and chews her lip for a moment. “My family still has my uncle’s car. I didn’t know. When I drove by a couple of months ago, I saw it beneath the car port and had a panic attack. Even though I know he is dead, _I_ killed him.”

“Logic goes out the window when it comes to things that hurt.”

Her fingers begin their rhythm again. “You’re tellin’ me.”

They fall into a comfortable silence, Erica humming every so often with the songs on the radio, fingers rasping against the leather steering wheel. When they take the turn and pull up in front of The Den, he turns to her.

“Thanks for coming to get me.”

She scoffs and slaps his shoulder. “Shut the fuck up and go read your magic shit.”

Stiles grins and salutes her, making his way to the front door.

It swings open before he even rests his hand on the knob, Derek shouldering past him with flickering blue eyes. “What the _fuck_ , Erica?”

Erica’s laugh tinkles like windchimes and bites like pelting rain. Stiles feels a smile tug upward on his lips at the sound. Shaking his head, he continues through the door, heading for his room. He tries not to scream in frustration when Peter stops him - because of course he stops him

“Stiles,” he addresses politely.

Stiles rolls his eyes and holds the book up, patting his pocket with a free hand to point out the bulge of the bottle there. “Yeah, yeah - I’m almost ready.”

Peter smiles courteously and nods, but Stiles can see the disguised relief in it. “I’ve dealt with a kanima before,” the man says, apropos of nothing. Stiles just looks at him. “This - this will not be a kanima. It’s something bigger. Badder.”

Stiles shrugs, genuinely not all that bothered. Peter blinks. “You owe me three grand,” is all Stiles says before turning to walk to his room.

x

Peter has him dancing, even though he fucking hates it. Peter acted as though it was the only job left after assigning the center stage roles to the rest of the team, but Stiles knows it’s revenge for his blasé attitude. There were four bands wrapped into the shirt of the outfit Peter laid out for him and a note saying _keep the change_.

It seems that the rest of the team has the mission covered. Boyd is exchanging pseudo-friendly chit chat with their mark at the bar, where he is mixing drinks and evading the hungry stares from the women sucking their straws suggestively. It’s his kill tonight.

Stiles wants to spend the night in a hotel somewhere. He wants to be spread out on sheets that smell like cheap detergent and forget who he is while on the other side of town. He needs to. He hasn’t gotten his shit properly laid out in weeks, which is a damn shame. It feels weird, thinking about sex without the accompanying thought of Jackson. It almost encourages a dull ache that he buried deep within to resurface. There is no more Jackson, now it is just sex.

He tracks his eyes along the men closest to his station, looking for anyone who catches his eye. There’s a cute blonde with light eyes and a cut jaw. A dark-skinned man with sinful lips and enticing muscles. A lean man in a crisp suit with nice stubble who looks like he’d be fun to ride, to take apart. Stiles gives the dancing his all tonight. He twirls gracefully around the ring. He adjusts himself so one leg is holding his weight, stretched straight behind him. His arms are behind him as well, each hand gripping the outer curves of the hoop. His right leg is bent so that the heel of his foot rests on his left knee. It takes a lot to get in this position, but it is relatively comfortable, allowing him to brace his weight forward while he slowly spins beneath the flashing lights. 

He blinks and squints out at the crowd again. His eyes latch on Derek’s. He’s at the back of the lounge, slouched uncaringly against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. Stiles is feeling incredible, hot, unstoppable. He smirks and keeps his eyes locked where they are. When Derek doesn’t immediately look away, Stiles takes a deep breath and flips himself, rearranging his hands to hold his weight from the top of the ring while he hangs upside down, carefully shifting his legs into a split. A few people whistle at him, but he ignores it in favor of seeking out Derek, a self satisfied grin threatening to tug at his lips. 

He swings the leg closest to him forward, wrapping it around the ring and hoisting himself upward so he can drop the other leg straight down, his back bowing as he dips his head backward. It gains him a couple of cheers and he smiles, all teeth, looking away from Derek. He did what he wanted to do, now the rest of this is about him. 

When he finally looks back up, Derek is gone. Stiles decides he is going to settle for the stubbled man in the suit.

x

The man is a werewolf, go figure. He flashes gold eyes at Stiles and groans deep and long when he sinks down in his lap. Stiles did not bother to learn his name. Part of the fun is the not knowing, he thinks. He was an excellent kisser, knowing just when to bite and just how to lick. He has various little tattoos staining his chest and abdomen that can be easily concealed in a suit. He is hot and great at sex - Stiles debates asking for his number later.

Stiles falls forward to mouth at his throat so he can feel the bob of his adam’s apple between his lips. He has one hand on Stiles’ thigh, thumb pressed deep into the soft inside, fingertips brushing his hip. His other hand is fisted into the sheets, knuckles flickering white whenever Stiles swirls his hips and grinds.

Stiles brings his own hands to trail his fingers along the column of the man’s neck. He wraps them lightly around the middle of his throat and digs his thumb beneath his pulse point. Sleeping with werewolves is fun because it is incredibly hot to play around with their biology, reduce them to baser instincts with simple touches. The man jerks like he has been electrocuted, driving his hips up into Stiles in a sharp thrust that sinks deeper than before. Stiles moans and curls his hand a little tighter, scraping his thumb’s fingernail lightly in place.

The man uncurls his fist from the sheets and slides the hand on Stiles’ thigh upward until both of his palms are twisted around Stiles’ hips. He holds him there, stilling his movements in favor of railing his hips upward. Stiles is not ashamed to say that his mouth falls slack and his body slumps forward, hand slipping from the man’s throat to hold himself upright.

The bed frame rocks and creaks in protest, clipping the wall in time with the cant of their movement. When it becomes too much, Stiles finally returns to his body and plants his palms on the other man’s chest, using the hold to lever himself up and down. The man’s eyes are hazy and unfocused, burning gold, a hint of fang catching on his lips every time he inhales a sharp gulp of air. Stiles has to blink past the dots in his vision. The man keeps the pace, sliding a hand to give Stiles a few torturous tugs that make his entire body shake with aftershocks. Stiles grips harshly at his shoulders while his hips stutter and drive up one last time. Stiles smirks slightly at the shudder he feels pulse through the man’s body beneath him.

Stiles carefully lifts off and collapses on his back beside him, both of them sweaty and panting.

This is normally the part where he feels beyond satisfied. He waits for it. Counts the seconds, watches the blades of the ceiling fan spin. And spin. And spin. It never comes. There is a sinking, hollow feeling in his chest. Looking at the fan begins to make him feel dizzy, so he turns his head and stares out the window. 

He misses Jackson. 

x

It’s just past two in the morning when Stiles sneaks back into The Den. Derek is on his bed when he slips into his room.

“Where the fuck were you?”

Stiles rolls his eyes, apparently he needs to start locking up his room whenever he leaves. He walks over to his dresser for a change of clothes, he wants to shower.

“You know exactly where I was."

Derek scowls. “Peter was pissed. You aren’t supposed to be fucking around while we are trying to deal with Deucalion.”

“Peter was already pissed at me. But, I’ve done what he asked me to do.”

“You haven’t done what he asked until the kanima is dead.”

“Well, I don’t see you bending over backwards to slay it.”

“It’s not my job.”

“So, you think it’s mine? Why, because I’m magic?” Stiles enunciates the word _magic_ with a dramatic display of jazz hands. He feels a little delirious, high strung from the emotional drain of the night. Derek needs to get a fucking grip.

The other man’s silence is answer enough. Stiles laughs, “You can turn into a full-sized, few-hundred-pound wolf. Go eat some kibble and practice rolling over or something.”

“Dog jokes? Really?”

Stiles lights up a palm, he just wants Derek to leave him alone for one goddamn night. “Well, I could burn you. But, something tells me you have an aversion to that sort of thing.”

The ‘wolf’s lip lifts up in a snarl and he shoots up quickly to stand. He stomps over to Stiles and, really, the shower is _calling his name_.

To Stiles’ surprise, Derek slaps an angry hand on his shoulder, dragging it across his chest and around his neck. “You smell fucking terrible.”

He pushes Derek away by the forearm. “Can we do this later.”

He drapes his shirt and sweats over his arm, side stepping the man to walk for the door. He literally growls in irritation when Derek catches him by the bicep.

“ _What._ ”

“Can you fucking _stop_ for _one second._ You’re always on the defensive anytime I speak to you. Can you just listen for _once_ without instigating a fucking fight.”

Stiles lips slam closed against the retort he was gearing up to fire.

“Things hurt. I know how things hurt, okay? I’m not saying you need a fucking shrink or that we should be friends or that I need someone to baby me or some shit. I’m being real with you, Stiles. I know about hurt.”

Stiles just stares.

“So. You can tell me. If you want. I won’t say anything. You can tell me about the things that hurt.”

Stiles blinks at him. In total transparency, this is the last thing he expected from Derek. The man is obviously trying for levity, presenting a chance at even ground. He is putting in a noticeable effort, and Stiles is just tired enough of being alone, just tired enough of never being allowed to have anything, that he decides to give in, just this once. “I went home today,” he says softly.

Derek’s mouth drops slightly like he didn’t expect Stiles to listen to him, didn’t expect him to actually consider confessing anything personal. Like he was prepared for Stiles to throw him out or burn him or something equally disastrous. Stiles is shocked himself, but he can’t stop.

Stiles fixes his eyes on the loose thread in the waist of the sweatpants he is holding. “My father - I ruined him, you know. I fucked up his life, I thought I did everything I could. But, there is always more. Sometimes I wonder if maybe I tried harder to talk to him, or if maybe I looked into rehabs - he wouldn’t have been so miserable all the time because of me.”

He looks back up and Derek is watching him intently, hanging onto every word. “He made me feel like shit. I was just a kid - who blames their kid for the death of their own mother? I lost her, too. I loved her, too.”

He hates that he feels like he is shaking. He hates that Derek has not snapped at him to silence his _woe is me_ bullshit, god knows Stiles would have done the same to him by now. “He hated me, let me tie myself to a place like this. But, I still—” _love him_ , is what he wants to say, but he doesn’t. “I still worry about him. If his heart is okay, if he is eating enough, if he still drinks too much. I worry about whether or not he knows that the washer rattles so hard sometimes that it unplugs itself every sixteen minutes. He probably replaced it, but what if he didn’t, you know. And the ironing board has a bad leg so it has to be propped against the wall to stay up—"

Derek frowns at him. “Stiles.”

He takes a deep breath and realizes that his chest is heaving. He holds a hand up to Derek. “I don’t need you to say anything. I just needed to let it out. _Fuck_."

Derek nods loyally, mouth falling shut. Stiles takes another shaky breath and thrusts a hand out, gesturing to the room at large while he huffs a self-deprecating laugh. “And tonight I realized that no one is ever going to be him.”

Derek looks at him, eyes still oddly understanding. “He’s your father, no one can—”

Stiles shakes his head and laughs again. “No one will ever be Jackson.” He feels hysterical. “I killed Jackson and now no one is ever going to be him.”

Derek sighs, it sounds tired. Fed up. Like he and Stiles have done this a million times, like tonight is not the first night Stiles has ever willingly let another person know that he is at his limit. “You did not kill Jackson, Stiles. He got caught up in some tough shit. He knew the risks.”

“He only risked it because of me. He was happy here and I went and fucked it all up.”

Derek waits until they lock eyes. “Jackson was an adult. He was perfectly capable of making his own decisions. You have to let go of the guilt, you can’t feel accountable for his downfall.”

“Hell will freeze over before I listen to Derek Hale’s advice about guilt,” Stiles attempts to snap, but it just sounds tired. Sad. He is so fucking sick of being tired and sad. 

Derek does not rise to the bait, eyeing him doubtfully, like he knows Stiles isn’t really hearing him. “Jackson made his choice, Stiles. He made his choice and he paid for it like he knew he would were he ever found out. If he wanted out so badly, a quick death was probably the best thing that could have happened to him." 

“You didn’t know him,” Stiles protests. But he knows Derek is right. Derek knows it, too.

“Did you?”

When Stiles stays quiet, Derek just shrugs and sidesteps him, heading for the door. “Sometimes the person someone shows us and the person we choose to see are two different people.”

Stiles is genuinely surprised. He wants to let his jaw fall slack and his tongue loll out like they are in a slapstick kid’s cartoon or something. His and Derek’s relationship has always been the same - all bark toward each other with relatively no bite. They don’t _do_ this, they never _have_ done this. Childishly, Stiles wants to blush at Derek’s seriousness. It feels _wrong_ to receive help from Derek. Sure, they have each other’s backs in the sense of pack, in the sense of obligation. They don’t talk about their feelings, they don’t confide in each other like their relationship is built on a foundation of trust rather than crafted out of desperation, brought together years ago by a lack of options.

He waits until Derek’s footsteps are completely gone. Until he can hear the electricity in the walls, the chain of his ceiling fan clinking lightly against the glass light bulb shade, the sound of Derek’s bedroom door clicking shut. He waits until the only thing he can hear is his own labored breathing. He waits and waits and waits, surrounded by silence. He waits for the bone-deep aching feeling to go away. It doesn’t.

He squeezes his eyes shut. _There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief._ _There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief._ _There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief._ _There’s too much confusion, I can’t—_

What the _fuck_ is wrong with him. He is _Stiles Stilinski_. He is better than this god damn it. He can’t stop hearing the clink of the ceiling fan’s chain. It reminds him of the sound Jackson’s cuff links made when he dropped them into the glass dish on Stiles’ nightstand. The record player doesn’t sound as good when Jackson isn’t playing shitty jazz on it that he says helps him focus on cases. Reading through spell books doesn’t feel the same without Jackson there to wrap a sly hand around his ankle and pull one of Stiles’ socks off just to hear his groan of annoyance at being distracted. 

Nothing is the same and Stiles thought he wouldn’t care, but he fucking does and he can’t make it stop. It won’t stop. 

He should know this, though. He should. It didn’t stop when he lost his mom. It didn’t stop when he lost his dad. He knows how it never stops and still some part of him thought this wouldn’t matter. He thinks of Derek. He thinks of Derek and how it never stops and how losing your entire family in the same day never ever stops. 

He makes a noise low in his throat, something between a growl, a sob, a lament. He walks on heavy feet to his bathroom, hands still wringing his clothes in a way he knows will leave them bunched up and wrinkled. He throws a hand up and the bathroom door slams, making him jump slightly at how the noise grates against the quiet. He stares at himself in the mirror. His cheeks are faintly blotchy, flush sparsely coloring down his neck. His eyes look glassy and half-crazed. “Get it the fuck together,” he growls lowly to his reflection. “You lose _everything_. Get fucking used to it.”

He can’t stop thinking about it. How Derek looked at him, said his name reverently rather than disdainfully.

He sits on the shower floor, shivering even though the spray is far too hot. He keeps replaying the words over and over - _sometimes the person someone shows us and the person we choose to see are two different people._

For the first time, Stiles seriously takes a moment to consider that perhaps he has never known Derek Hale at all. 

x 

Handling yellow wolfsbane without gloves was a poor oversight on Stiles’ part - he is man enough to admit that.

It didn’t hurt him - not like it would a ‘wolf. But, the yellow plant did dry out the skin of his fingers, making them crack and shrivel and sting when he used his magic. He’s tired after having to inscribe rune after rune on his heart to smooth out his hands whenever the burn gets too uncomfortable to work with. But, overall, he managed to do what he needed to do.

Boyd and Isaac came back with an address to a warehouse that has an intricate cellar built beneath it. Isaac rolled out a worn blueprint across the dining room table and took his time explaining the layout to the rest of the team while Peter hummed approvingly - likely still trying to make up for the venom incident. It’s the perfect place for a pack to lie low with the perfect basement to house a transforming kanima - a little _too_ perfect. But, Stiles doesn’t jinx it.

The plan is seamless, though. Stiles and Derek are on kanima duty, Isaac outside with the car, Boyd by the door, and Erica is to stay behind and handle another hit.

Stiles is high priority on this mission, he is the only one who can kill the kanima. Derek is backup, fully armed and prepared to fully shift if necessary. Peter won’t be coming - he never does - but he wishes them luck all the same.

The ride to the location is deadly silent. Stiles has spelled all of them to disguise their scent and heartbeats. No one is making noise save for the faint rustle of fabric against the leather seats or the occasional intake of breath.

Stiles has his dagger sheathed in a strap on his thigh and a gun tucked tightly by his hip. He had to forgo the bat, unfortunately. The wolfsbane cocktail is nestled safely in his front pocket, at the ready. He is nervous, more nervous than he has been in a while for a mission. He doesn’t voice his concerns, he knows they can all see it written on his face.

When they pull up, there are no other vehicles in sight. Stiles and Derek exit the car first - Derek has a text message already typed up and ready to send when they are in position. It’s smarter like this, to go in increments instead of dispelling everyone at once. They locate the busted side window Isaac told them about. Derek hoists Stiles noiselessly through it before quickly hefting himself through the gap.

Dust and dirt swirls in the moonlight around their feet where their movements disrupted the otherwise stagnant atmosphere. It is eerily silent, their breaths sounding off like gunfire in the quiet.

There are boxes scattered across the floor, some turned over spilling random contents, others splintered and littering the open space. The beams supporting the ceiling are rusted and every so often something creaks and a trail of dust trickles from above. According to the floor plans, the cellar door is in the far-left corner of the warehouse, nestled behind a structurally useless alcove.

Stiles turns to Derek, ready to give him the go-ahead, when Derek groans and collapses, making all kinds of fucking noise. Stiles is ready to kill the man when an ear-splitting screech nearly brings him to his knees. They are drenched in shadow, the moonlight obscured by it. Stiles glances up to see a silhouette resting against one of the support beams, flecks of rust raining with the disruption. It has a swishing tail peeking from behind an outstretched wingspan dripping slime.

The kanima.

Stiles looks back at Derek, who is curled over, clutching his head and groaning through gritted teeth. Stiles tries not to panic - he flips through the information in his head. There was nothing written in any of the bestiaries he consulted that detailed a reaction like this. Derek’s hands become clawed and blood slides down in rivulets from where they embed themselves in Derek’s skin. Stiles drops down across from him, trying to draw healing runes over the ‘wolf’s heart, but Derek’s bent arms are blocking his access. He stops groaning, claws retracting from his face. Derek drops his hands and uses them to prop himself up, gulping air like he is starved for it. He raises his head and blinks sedately at Stiles.

His eyes are red.

“No, Derek, _fuck_ ,” Stiles feels like he may vomit.

The kanima leaps from the beam, wings catching air as it glides, landing tens of yards away. Stiles blinks, confused. He tracks its movements for a moment, watching as it looks around before stalking off in the wrong direction.

He snaps his gaze back to Derek, whose eyes are still burning crimson. The kanima screeches again. He makes a split-second decision and fists his hands into the shoulders of Derek’s shirt. He squeezes his eyes shut and wordlessly begs. _Please, please,_ he asks. He envisions the night sky, sees himself floating among the stars. _Please, we are the same. What made you, made me as well. I beg you to do this for me._ He is pleading with the universe, seeking her out in a way he has never tried.

“Stiles, no, _stop it_ ,” Derek growls.

Stiles ignores him. He envisions Derek in the backseat of the car beside Boyd, demanding Isaac to get them the fuck out of there.

Derek grips his chin. “Stiles, fucking _stop_.”

“Go,” he breathes. His hands fall to his sides and when he opens his eyes, Derek is gone. His nostril tickles as blood drips lightly from it. He slides the back of his hand against his nose to catch it before getting shakily to his feet.

The kanima is still across the warehouse, facing the opposite direction. Stiles takes a second to scan the rest of the building, searching for the master. No dice. His attention falls back to the kanima when it slams into the wall and shrieks in frustration before turning around. It stalks away, toward Stiles, but it doesn’t show any hint of being ready to attack. It’s reptile eyes are shifting this way and that, like it isn’t focusing on anything. It is walking straight, but it isn’t sure-footed, stumbling every other step. Almost like it’s - almost like it’s _blind_.

Stiles wants to cackle and curl up at the same time. It is funny, in a way, because the kanima is _blind_ , which is going to make this so much easier. On the flipside, the kanima being blind only means one thing.

Stiles quietly crosses the warehouse so he has time to re-strategize. This is too easy. If Deucalion needed the kanima so badly, it makes no sense that it’d be this vulnerable. The man has a pack - it would have been logical to have a packmate master the creature while Deucalion instructed. So, either the kanima is a convenient guise or Stiles is missing the bigger picture.

He takes a steadying breath and curls his fingers around the bottle in his pocket. It’s just him right now, he doesn’t have to worry about the safety of anyone else. If this goes poorly, it’s just him here. It’s much easier to make decisions like this when he doesn’t have to consider possible casualties.

He stands and heads straight toward the kanima. It startles at the noise and turns toward him with a roar.

When he gets close enough, he freezes.

In the midst of this, he forgot what this was. _Who_ this was. Facing the kanima now, he can see it. The bone structure, the curve of its eyes, the subtle shape of his face. He tries not to think of nights curled together in bed, exchanging secrets and feeling like he had someone on his side.

Jackson - the _kanima_ \- tilts its head, blinking.

“In another life, I would have run away with you,” he tells it. “I would have run to London - anywhere you wanted, I would have gone.”

The creature blinks again, eyes flickering. It slows to a stop, considering Stiles like a confused animal. That’s what he is now. An animal. 

Stiles swallows hard against the burn that builds in his throat, the rough pressure behind his eyes. “If things were different, I would have loved you. So, god damn you, Jackson, for making me watch you die twice.”

He dumps the yellow wolfsbane into his open palm, cups his hand and blows it into the kanima’s face. He steps back when it curls over, screeching through its sharp teeth, talon-covered fingers surging up to clutch at its head.

Smoke billows from its face where its skin seems to be melting off. He thinks back to a memory of when he was in elementary school - he’d been playing outside and poured salt on a slug. He remembers crying with guilt as he watched it writhe. Stiles swallows hard again, tries to pretend that he doesn’t want to just curl up on the ground and scream.

A gunshot fires off. Once. Twice.

Stiles hits the floor and covers his head, cringing against the noise. His ears are ringing, but he feels no pain. He squints an eye open and he can see the kanima crumpled on the floor across from him, oozing thick liquid from two gunshot wounds. 

“You have no idea how many times I have wanted to fucking shoot that bastard. If he would have just left like he was supposed to, we wouldn’t be here.”

Lydia holsters the hand gun like she didn’t just use it, smoothing a stray strand of hair out of her face. She looks down at Stiles, her mouth curling downward in distaste, but she offers him a gloved hand nonetheless. 

Stiles scowls at her, pushing himself up and shouldering her hand away. Mind reeling at her words.

He sniffs hard, embarrassed that she heard that. Embarrassed that he almost cried. “What do you mean _if he left like he was supposed to_?”

“Lose the attitude, please. I can only deal with one dramatic display at a time and I just used it up helping your sorry ass kill a kanima.”

Stiles’ hands light up and she just laughs, rolling her eyes. “Do you know how much brain power it takes to procure the things that were made for Jackson? The things that were made for _you_?” She gives a humorless huff. “ _Of course_ you don’t, because if you did, you would be in fucking London right now.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? Daehler’s papers?” Stiles isn’t in the mood to play guessing games. 

Lydia bares her teeth at him. “Daehler didn’t make shit. He was simply a middle man, he didn’t even look inside of the case. Don’t you think he would have recognized you from the half a dozen sheets of paper with your photo on them?” She shakes her head. “You’re all fucking idiots.”

She sounds so much like Peter it is almost frightening. He can tell why the man likes her so much. 

_Peter._

“What the fuck happened to Peter,” he demands, searching her face for traces of deceit. 

“Peter?” she scoffs. “What am I, his keeper? We need to get out of here.”

He grabs her by the arm. “You know exactly what happened.”

“The only thing I know,” she grits through her teeth, yanking her arm from his hold, “is that we need to fucking get out of here. Do you hear me? _Now._ ”

A gunshot sounds and they both fall, the bullet splintering one of the boxes behind them. “ _Run_ ,” Lydia growls, pulling her own gun and aiming over their cover. 

“Are you kidding me? I am not running,” Stiles snaps, quickly rolling behind the metal beam next to them. 

“Fucking _idiots_ ,” she repeats under her breath, her jaw clenching while she quickly fires three times, barely blinking against the sound. 

Stiles can hear cursing, the sound of a vehicle pulling up outside. He unholsters his own gun and takes a deep breath, darting out from his hiding spot and firing at their target. 

It’s a man. Stiles’ bullet lands in his shoulder, but he barely moves at the impact. He merely pulls his lip over his teeth in a snarl, clawed fingers digging the bullet out and dropping it to the ground. 

Stiles curses, running quickly to the cover of the next beam. He twists around and shoots. It’s the same guy, which should be impossible given how Stiles just changed positions. He fires twice, he hits the man’s leg and hip area, smirking slightly at the sound the man makes at the impact. 

Stiles crouches down while he reloads, body thrumming. He fucking hates using guns. If he could just get close enough to use his hands. He spares a glance to Lydia, who is somehow shooting at the same man Stiles just shot.

Oh.

Stiles grits his teeth in frustration. Twins. 

He turns again only to come face to face with a woman. She flashes him a shark smile. “Boo,” she says, punctuated with a quick fist straight into his jaw. She rounds on him again and he hisses when a ring slices into the skin on his cheekbone. He ducks to evade her next hit, rolling along the floor before gaining his footing again and running like hell toward the window he entered from.

He is blindsided by a tall bald man. He kicks at the backs of Stiles’ legs, causing his knees to buckle. He grips one of the spark’s calves and Stiles growls through his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut before letting electricity pulse through every inch of his body. 

The man drops him, cradling his hand to his chest and snarling at Stiles like a wounded animal. Stiles focuses all of his energy into maintaining the charge while he aims for the window. He swiftly ducks behind a stack of boxes so he can turn and check on how Lydia is doing. Stiles watches in abject horror and reluctant fascination while the twins fuse together, morphing into one bigger, broader unit. 

What the fuck. 

Lydia shoots at them. Twice. Three times. 

_Click. Click. Click._

She is out of bullets. 

The twins - twin - grins, closing in while Lydia curses and deftly reloads her gun. The woman who hit him is blocking her in from the other side. He can’t seem to find the man who took his legs out. He can’t focus, he tries to put a plan together but he can’t _think_. 

His head feels like it is underwater when he sees Lydia go down. 

He blinks and jumps back when he feels something cool close around his ankle. The buzzing under his skin stops. He looks down. 

Iron. 

He is struck in the side of his head. Hard. He buckles to the ground, hands barely catching his fall. He peers up, eyes catching on the silver glint of a cobra’s head, holding a stare with the emerald eyes. 

He closes his eyes in defeat when he hears the man’s voice. “We meet again, baby mage.”

Stiles is helpless against his vision inking black. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> allusions to noncon 
> 
> uhh graphic violence
> 
> is graphic depictions of grief a thing ? if so um yea lmao that's definitely in there
> 
> stiles being an asshole as per usual + lots of swearing


	6. interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy holidays guys. merry xmas to any of you who celebrate. 
> 
> this is not the next chapter - i know, i suck. this past week has been rough for me and i just needed an outlet. so i decided to do another character interlude to vent some of the pent up negativity i had. so this is hella sad lmao. i am still working hard on the next real update so stay tuned. i should be finished in the next week or so (and the end count is probably gonna go up, rip).
> 
> for this one i had a few songs on repeat, but [this](https://open.spotify.com/track/6RGGOBfNQLOvQhyl1oG2oD?si=kF_O3510TfuThtZwZrL5KA) is definitely the one i listened to the most. it doesn't really pertain to this story lyrically i suppose, but the overall vibe of it is what i needed while i wrote this so yea. also the sheriff's name is john leave me alone shfjkssfjfkj
> 
> anyway this is not beta read and i will stop talking. warnings and whatnot in the end notes

**Interlude - Nothing Gold Can Stay**

“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life [is] bound in shallows and in miseries.”

  
  
  
  


Claudia likes bugs. 

When they move into their first apartment together - high on life and still very much in their honeymoon phase - Claudia does not let John kill the insects that crawl along the walls. She keeps a plastic souvenir cup from their second date and a piece of junk mail that was printed on cardstock handy, gently scooping up anything that doesn’t belong inside. 

When they go to the park, she catches lizards, lets them dangle from her fingers and laughs loud and unabashed every time John makes a face. She likes plants, too. She can name far too many mushrooms using the dichotomous key, points out trees and uses terms like _tangential surface_ and _crown_ and _heartwood_ that make him just want to kiss her. 

She dresses a little oddly, which is not an issue for him - he is rarely seen outside of a plain shirt and jeans. She always makes him feel underdressed and a little boring. She takes up so much space while John has spent his life trying to fit the molds carved out for him. 

Claudia buys weird mugs from thrift stores and wears too-big overalls that have paint splatters on them and owns so many shoes yet can only be seen in a mustard yellow pair whose soles have eroded from years of love. She is like the sun, a little bit, and John has never really been afforded the kind of warmth she gives him. 

She works part time at the local library while he grits his teeth through the police academy. She gardens, grows little things like tomatoes and peas and cute purple flowers that he forgot the name of almost immediately after she told him. She knows things about the moon phases and outer space and talks about things like solstices and equinoxes - she is too smart, too worldly for someone like John. She really is. He thanks whoever may be out there listening for aligning their trajectories. He never believed the cheesy bullshit about how some people can bring out the best in you, but she really does. She makes him want to be better. 

x

  
  


They move into a house. A fixer-upper with busted porch steps and sloping shingles. Of course, Claudia loves it. She paints a wall in their room pale yellow, hangs plants from hooks in the ceiling and decorates their windows with curtains that do nothing to stop the light from spilling in. She dangles various scuffed up, odd-colored pots above the small island in the kitchen, stacks weathered cookbooks on the counter by the stove. She hauls the ugliest couch John has ever seen into the living room by herself - floral and lumpy in a way that is just shy of uncomfortable. The throw pillows don’t match and their rugs are frayed at the edges. She buys home décor they don’t need from estate sales for people they didn’t know and the towels in their bathroom closet are in various patterns and most likely meant for the beach. The house feels like her. John wouldn’t have it any other way. 

He is twenty-five, Claudia twenty-four and three months pregnant, when he is rifling around for a lighter so he can fire up the grill. Claudia laughs while he struggles and playfully blows a strand of hair out of her face before rolling her eyes and lighting the coals herself. 

With her hands.

John goes slack jawed and Claudia’s laughter goes silent. 

Fear makes you different. John has always run from the things he cannot understand. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. He is not proud to have spent two weeks away, sleeping on an old friend’s couch while he told himself that he did not need to be wrapped up in something like that. But, in his dreams, he sees Claudia’s smile. While he is showering, he smells her strawberry shampoo. When he is driving to work, he hears the whisper of her laugh from the front seat. 

The first few days back are stilted. It’s his house but it feels different, he feels like maybe he never really knew her. 

The worst thing to do when you are at a crossroads in your relationship is have a baby. It’s in every advice book, every relationship blog. _Do not have a baby to save your marriage_. 

Stiles arrives six months later. 

Claudia names him after her father, a Polish name that sounds beautiful when it slides from her tongue. John could not say it to save his life, but he tried. She laughs and laughs, but let it be said, for the record, that he tried. 

So, he calls him Stiles. Because in high school, when John was on the football team, that is what was emblazoned on the back of his letterman because _Stilinski is just too damn long, kid, either you need a shorter name or a bigger jacket._

John wishes he never read those blogs, never flipped through those books, because Stiles is probably the best thing that could have happened to them. He giggles and coos when you bounce him in your lap, snuffles and snores in a way that seems way too big for such a small baby. He never cries, but when he does it is quiet. Scarily quiet. John wakes up in the middle of the night and creeps into his room just to peer into the crib. Just to make sure that he isn’t crying and no one could hear him. 

He isn’t a picky eater, which all of the parenting books warn for. He happily gums at whatever you feed him, as long as it lands in his mouth like an airplane. He likes it better when Claudia does it, claps his sticky hands and shrieks in delight. John knows the feeling - everything is better when Claudia does it. 

  
  


x

  
  


John is man enough to admit that he cries when he drops Stiles off at his first day of Pre-K. 

Stiles does not seem sad at all. His cheeks are blotchy and his eyes are bright - he is excited. He wants to stop holding John’s hand because _I wanna go color, dad_. He introduces himself to the teacher and keeps his ringer on all day. He worries the entire time, is high strung on every possible catastrophic scenario. He is tapping the steering wheel with shaking hands while he waits in the parking lot for school to end. He slumps in relief when he sees the messy head of hair bee-lining through the other students. 

“Dad, dad, look,” he thrusts a paper up at John, gripped tightly in a dirty fist, talking a mile a minute. John inspects what is supposed to be him and Claudia standing next to the cruiser. He bites back a laugh, because it looks nothing like him and Claudia, and the cruiser looks like a mangled blob of black, red, and blue. But, he just smiles, because he is happy, and he ruffles Stiles’ hair and tells him he did a wonderful job. When they go home, he hoists Stiles up, even though he is getting too big, and lets him hang it on the fridge so everyone can see. 

What they don’t tell you is how fast Pre-K turns into kindergarten, how kindergarten turns into first grade. 

What they also don’t tell you is how hard it is to have sex when your house is haunted by a kid with ADHD and endless energy. He always finds them. They slip into the laundry room, convinced Stiles is in his bedroom doing his homework, when suddenly his head pops from behind the door until he is squeezing in between them. They’ll both sigh, but it’s just for show. Because they love Stiles, and time spent with him is not too terribly hard to give up sex for. 

Okay, it is a little hard. 

They make use of nap time. When Stiles is in the shower, when he stays over at Melissa’s house, when he is in the yard learning about plants like Claudia showed him.

The magic thing never leaves his mind. It doesn’t. Claudia hasn’t done anything around him since the time with the grill, and John wonders if he would have ever known had she not slipped up that day. Well, at least, she hasn’t done anything on purpose. The first time her hands catch fire in bed, erupting while she buries moans into the pillow, John freezes. Because burning things must mean _bad, stop_. But, she curls her hands into fists and rocks back, makes a noise that demands he keep going. John thinks about it after, wonders if being a deputy has worryingly intermingled danger and desire, crossed the wires in his mind. 

She shocks him by accident when she hands him the mail. He hisses and drops the envelopes, cradling his wrist. She apologizes, but he just laughs, because it didn’t hurt that bad. It just surprised him.

More and more these things happen, but John figures it is because she is finally comfortable. She doesn’t have to hide it anymore. She reads various books on it around him, keeps the lamp on her nightstand illuminated long after he has rolled over, reciting spells under her breath. She traces something over his heart after a suspect clocked him in the face when he was taking them into custody. He watches in the bathroom mirror as the swelling ebbs away, leaving nothing behind. 

Things are so good for them. John has never known what it feels like to have a complete family. He can’t believe he could have missed out on this. 

  
  


x

  
  


Claudia reads to him, science books and fantasy novels and poetry. She likes _Julius Caesar_ , has always liked it, keeps a poor, worn copy on the nightstand as a testament to just how much she likes it. But, John personally has always liked when she reads Robert Frost, always thinks about his poem _Nothing Gold Can Stay_. It has always felt like a warning. Inevitable. 

The thing he learned from becoming a cop - always trust your gut. 

Claudia forgets to pick Stiles up from school. 

Then, she forgets to pick him up from Melissa’s.

Then, she screams at him right in front of John because she has no idea who he is or why he is trying to kill her. 

He is scared. He is scared to leave Stiles home because he fears that Claudia might burn him, might forget who she is, where she is, and electrocute him. John doesn’t know what he would do if his wife killed their son. 

Stiles spends most of his time with John at the station, bothering the deputies and sleeping on the couch in John’s office. He babbles constantly and flirts with all the secretaries. It makes John smile, small, but there nonetheless. Stiles is one of the only things he smiles about these days. 

When the hospital becomes a more frequent residence than their home, John loses Stiles, too. He knows it. The skip in his step slowly weighs down until it is gone. His crooked smile hasn’t made an appearance in so long that when John closes his eyes, he cannot envision it. Stiles stays with her, has always loved her more than he loved John. He eats her Jello and thumbs through _Julius Caesar_ and watches TV even though the screen in her room has an infuriating red line running through the middle of it, disrupting the pixels. 

Stiles drops his extracurriculars, they are nothing serious since he is still in middle school, just started. But, John hates to see him wilt away. Hates to see him give up band practice to sit in the hospital all day, hates to see him quit chess club to eat old Jello cups and watch boring adult TV. It makes John angry. He is losing everything and there is not one damn thing he can do about it.

He wonders if it is possible to fall out of love with someone like Claudia. He wishes he could. He wishes he could stop loving her, wishes that when she gets mean and when she screams that he could switch it off. Switch off the part of him that is never going to stop associating her with the color yellow, the part of him that thinks of her when he feels the sun, the part of him that would have died for her before he let something like this weather her down to nothing. 

He thinks, then, that this is the part in a marriage where having a kid ruins everything. The part where one of you is dying and there is nothing either of you can fucking do about it. 

When he goes home alone, Stiles curled up in the chair at Claudia’s bedside, he finds himself hating that everything in the house is her. He curls up in their bed and all he can think about is the bedspread that she picked out, the memory-foam pillow under his head that she got for him, the stupid fucking yellow wall on his side of the room. She is everywhere and for the first time it is suffocating. 

He sleeps in Stiles’ room. 

  
  


x

  
  


Claudia screams that Stiles is stealing her pills. The boy doesn’t even flinch and it makes something in John shrivel up, a piece of himself decaying into nothing. 

The thing he hates most about being human, he thinks, is how easy it is to forget. How he has known Claudia for a little less than half his life, yet he already cannot recall how her laugh sounds, he forgot where her eyes crinkle when she smiles. He looks at her, tries to conjure up how her nose twisted whenever she teased him, and he can’t. He goes to his cruiser and slams his fists into the steering wheel until his hands go numb. 

His dad used to drink - he was a mean drunk. John swore he would never be like him, but it’s only human to find comfort in the things you know the best. He wishes whiskey wasn’t the same color as her eyes, thinks that makes it burn worse on the way down. 

Stiles spills juice from the carton, splatters it all over the kitchen tiles. It doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t. But John is drowning. 

He yells at him. He yells at him and Stiles still doesn’t flinch. He just takes it, then goes to his room and John feels like the scum of the Earth. He sits at the dining table, twirling an empty glass in his hands. He remembers after a while, through the haze, that Stiles is a silent crier, that he doesn’t make noise. He could need John right now and he just can't hear it. John slinks up the stairs, feeling awful, and cracks the boy’s door open. He is sound asleep, curled on his side. John just stands there, he doesn’t know how long, he just stands there listening to Stiles breathe. 

x

When she dies, he doesn’t feel it. 

Why doesn’t he feel it. 

He drinks throughout the funeral. He regrets it. Immediately. But, he can’t stop. Stiles looks at him, looks at him with her eyes, clouded in disappointment. But he doesn’t say anything. So John doesn’t stop. 

He embarrasses himself with the eulogy. He knows he does. But no one says anything to him about it. His wife just died. He is allowed to be drunk because the love of his life just died. 

Stiles is smart like her. Has her eyes and nose, the same tilt to his mouth. He talks like her and gestures like her. He can make fire like her. She is dead and all John wants to do is forget and here Stiles is, in her house where everything looks like her, forcing John to relive it over and over again. 

He is rarely home and when he is home he is rarely conscious. He never removed the mourning cloth from his heart and now it is just a part of him. Nothing is the same. 

He paints the walls. Goes to Lowe’s and stares dead-eyed at the swatches until eventually he is in his room and everything is off-white. He hates the color yellow. He buys new pots and rolls up the rugs. He can’t bring himself to replace the couch. 

When Stiles gets home, he is angry. His face is all hard lines of rage, but he doesn’t say anything. They don’t talk much these days. Claudia held the best parts of them both, he thinks. 

In all of those books he skimmed about the development of children, they all talk about grief. How kids process it differently, how they take it harder. John thinks it is bullshit because he is fucking drowning and Stiles is silent, always silent. 

He knows where the papers in his case files come from. He knows Stiles is helping, but John is still so angry, still aching at losing the best parts of himself. 

When he gets elected as the sheriff, everyone takes him out for drinks. He doesn’t tell them that he had plans to go home and get blackout drunk. Didn’t tell them that he spends more time slumped on the couch than he does awake. 

Stiles is skinny. Lean and sharp and cold-eyed. He loses the soft slopes that came from Claudia, his eyes turn dark where hers were pools of honey. He is nothing but hard edges with an air of finality, scarily observant with a devil-may-care demeanor. John hates that he turned him into this.

He thinks about it again, then. What he buried. Nothing gold can stay. 

Doesn’t he fucking know it. 

When Stiles says he is leaving, John lets him. Because maybe he can finally pass out without the guilt. Maybe he can leave his whiskey on the counter without feeling the weight of Stiles’ disappointment. Maybe he can finally fucking move on like he has been trying to do for years. 

He sits on her couch while Stiles talks to him with her mouth and even though John replaced everything else she is still there. She won’t leave, so Stiles must. He has to before John withers away. 

He meets Peter, plays nice in the way that grown men do when they have something to gain from each other. He laughs and shakes hands and drinks expensive liquor and then he leaves. He leaves Stiles with a man who smiled with all of his teeth and raked his eyes over you like he knew you were nothing to him. 

When he gets home, he drinks. Big surprise. He drinks and drinks right there at the kitchen table because no one is there to stop him. No one is there to look at him like he is a failure. 

He sees it when he is halfway through a bottle all on his own, crawling along the floor. A roach no bigger than the nail on his thumb. He scoots his chair back and walks over to it, crushes it beneath his heel. 

He thinks about what he just did. With a bitter taste in his throat and the souvenir cup in his mind’s eye. He thinks about it and he feels sick. He thinks about it and he fucking cries. 

That night, he sleeps in Stiles’ room. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alcoholism (shocker)
> 
> allusions to bad family relationships
> 
> unfair and illogical blame upon a child for things beyond their control
> 
> bad coping mechanisms


	7. act iv

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so - surprise surprise, it is me again. i have been working on and off on this chapter since i posted act iii. i have been genuinely struggling with it and it was frustrating me. well, tonight i realized that the reason i am struggling to advance the plot is because the plot advancement is going to have to come from stiles' perspective. and this chapter is derek's. i am a fool. so this is just over 8k, and i feel bad because it is significantly shorter than my other chapters, and honestly i am not very happy with it, but there is really not a lot i can do djdghdjgdjkg
> 
> also, quick heads up, about half of this chapter is just derek's pov on various things that happened in act iii. it feels like a cheap shot, but i wanted to give you guys his take on a few of the things that took place. i have no idea when the next chapter will be ready, but i would probably estimate like ...1-2 weeks perhaps. so please bear with me ):
> 
> also - i made some character graphic things cause i thought it would be fun. em made me some freeking amazing ones that inspired me to make some as well. so you can view them [here](https://iminsatiable.tumblr.com/post/638542972932210688/me-however-my-wickedness-may-precede-me-for)
> 
> as usual, not beta read. i do not care abt typos very much bc i have no respect for the english language. it is the ground i walk on djkdhjdkh. additional warnings in the end notes. you know the drill.

**Act IV - Emissary**

“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once.”

Marin Morrell can’t be taller than five-foot-four on a good day.

Derek listens diligently to her every word, acting though he is solely focused on polishing the glass in front of him. She’s with a woman he doesn’t recognize - he doesn’t think Morrell recognizes her either if their stilted small talk is any indication.

They’re at the pool tables, playing at the second to last one, and Derek can keep a pretty close eye on them from his place behind the bar. Morrell pockets three balls on her turn and responds to the woman’s question about Deucalion’s new drug called _Haze_ \- more specifically, she brushes it off, insisting that it’s still in its early stages, but Derek can hear the slightest uptick in her heart. _Lie_.

The woman she’s with laughs, imploring more about her position. She spins some bullshit story about being Duke’s primary drug runner. Derek’s surprised to hear her describe herself as his diplomat of sorts. He sucks hard on his teeth when he realizes that she is dancing around the word _emissary_. A few people at the bar spare him a questioning glance but quickly avert their eyes at his scowl.

At every question, Morrell gives an easy, charming smile and a humble explanation. She’s good at diverting attention elsewhere, like a goddamn illusionist. She reroutes the conversation from Duke’s plans to the burnouts she saw on the street yesterday, then swiftly switches the topic to the new bar that just opened three blocks away. She closes her body language when the questions become too invasive, opens herself and appears friendlier when they move on, subconsciously gearing the woman she is speaking to back to safer territory. It’s _smart_.

When they finish their game of pool, Morrell gives a polite, tight-lipped smile and says she has to get going. Derek waits a deliberate forty-five seconds, listening closely to the crimson red second-hand of his watch tick tick ticking, before making his way after her to the parking lot. He manages to catch a glimpse of her slipping into the driver’s seat of a nondescript slate-gray car. He walks leisurely, tucks his hands into his jacket pockets but steps with purpose, aligns his body with intention. Nothing appears more suspicious than someone with nowhere to be. When he slides into his Camaro, he takes his time adjusting the radio and rotating the air conditioning vents back and forth while she backs out of her parking spot. It’s midday, just past five, and the sun is blaring hot and bright. It’s a little disorienting after having been in the dim lights of the club.

He makes sure to stay at least one car away from her in the opposite lane, careful not to trail too closely. He moves to the right lane to let faster traffic blur by. She maintains the speed limit, frequently falling under before speeding back up. Almost like she is scared of breaking the law, scared of being pulled over. Derek doesn’t blame her; he’s got enough blood on his name to know better than to trust cops. She takes a few obscure turns that make Derek wince internally when he follows behind her. He takes a few backroads when he can, when he knows they will come out at the same place. Women like Morrell aren’t stupid and Derek foolishly chose to drive his expensive car. When she finally comes to a stop, he’s more than a little confused to find that they have pulled into the front lot of a veterinary clinic. He thinks about the jokes Stiles would make if he were here. Derek immediately clears that thought from his head. Morrell gets out and opens her back door, removing a pristine animal carrier. The only thing is, the crate seems to be empty, swaying back and forth in the wind. 

He slips his phone out and snaps a picture of her on her way to the front door. Before he locks it, his eyes zero in on the man who greets her. He’s young, probably around Stiles’ age. He has a boyish look to his features, a tilted jaw and a crooked smile. He grins with all of his teeth when he opens the door, motioning Morrell inside with a friendly wave. Derek snaps a picture of him as well, just in case.

He opts to sit there and wait for her to come back out when his phone begins to vibrate from its place in his hand, Peter’s contact flashing obnoxiously across the screen.

Derek answers it with a huff. “What?”

“Now, that’s no way to speak to your favorite uncle,” Peter drawls.

“I’m in the middle of something.”

“Well, I suggest you get to the end of that something. Quickly.”

Derek sighs and casts one last look at the license plate on Morrell’s car, committing it to memory. He doesn’t want to lose an opportunity like this, but what Peter says goes. “Alright, I’m headed that way.”

“Perfect,” Peter says, a smirk evident in his voice. Derek hangs up with thoughts of wiping the look off of the man’s face.

x

Derek would rather die than admit it aloud, but he and Stiles are two sides of the same coin.

If you were to boil it down, the two of them are far more alike than they are different. Honestly, that’s probably the reason they are so quick to snap at each other. Derek hates looking in the mirror and Stiles may as well be his fucking reflection. The spark harbors the same hurt, the same dread, lives the same inescapable life that neither of them asked for.

But, as much as Derek dislikes Stiles, he does respect him. Stiles is a lot of things - reckless, quick-tempered, insensitive. But, he’s also dangerously clever, intelligent, and shockingly receptive for someone who has endured as much as he has. While they don’t agree on most things, and too many of their conversations devolve into fights and pissing contests, Derek trusts Stiles to make the right call, he trusts Stiles to leave emotions out of the equation in favor of strategy. It’s why Peter liked him so goddamn much, he saw Stiles’ potential before anyone else at The Den even looked at him twice. Peter is a predator, but there was more to his pull toward Stiles than base attraction - Peter doesn’t entertain those who he can’t profit off of.

Stiles shuts himself off, powers down when he can’t handle something. He responds to hurt by burying it. Derek tries not to think about how behavior like that is learned. Tries not to think of what taught him to do the same thing. It’s dangerous, the way Stiles copes. But, Derek guesses he has no room to speak about coping mechanisms. Stiles is explosive - his hands flare up in anger, and his eyes shine sharper than any blade. It’s only a matter of time, Derek thinks, until the hurt he’s harboring morphs into a molotov, awaiting Stiles to pitch it in a fit of rage.

That being said, Derek is shocked to see Stiles come back with Erica, superficially himself, but his scent reeking of sadness - _heartbreak_. It’s disorienting. Derek is angry at Erica for taking his car without asking, so he doesn’t get to think about the implications of something actually breaking _Stiles’_ heart.

Derek is still pissed at him for their conversation in his bedroom. It’s a rare sight to see Stiles losing it, to see him break open and _not_ reach for the closest thing to ingest. Honestly, it made Derek’s gums itch and his hackles raise. Stiles never talked about Daehler, despite Derek trying to extend an olive branch the best way he knew how. It was obviously a sensitive topic, a bad touch type of situation or some shit. The only thing is, whenever Derek tries to help Stiles with anything, the spark throws Kate Argent’s name around like fucking confetti. It’s infuriating.

Derek doesn’t _do_ drama; he doesn’t sit around waiting to get kicked while he is down. Stiles is a grown man, if he doesn’t want to talk, _fine_. Derek doesn’t have to be told twice. But, he’d sat there and watched Stiles fuck Daehler up to hell and back. He’d heard the snaps and crunches, he’d seen the miniscule flecks of blood from the man’s mouth decorate the ends of Stiles’ bat. If Derek had been in charge of the initial roughing up, he isn’t sure he would have been able to do much worse. So, to see Stiles slumped in defeat, curled up and whispering to himself, radiating a bone-deep sensation of hurt - it didn’t feel right. For Stiles to believe that Daehler didn’t pay even after all of that, well, Derek isn’t sure he wants to know what the man did. He knows killing Kate did fuck all to satiate his thirst for revenge. 

He is wrestling lightly with Erica for his keys when it clicks. He rolls suddenly to evade her incoming fist and rises to his feet. He looks to the front door where Stiles has already disappeared.

He wrinkles his nose at Erica. “Why the fuck does he smell like that?”

She pushes herself up from the ground, dusts gravel from her pants and shrugs. “Not really my place to tell.”

Derek tries not to bristle at Erica knowing something about Stiles that he doesn’t. “He isn’t hurt, is he?”

She shrugs again. “Not physically.”

Derek rolls his shoulders and sniffs hard a couple of times, bringing the back of his hand to scrape over his nose in an attempt to dispel the stench. When he blinks back into focus, Erica is looking at him seriously. She has this way of staring into you, rather than at you. Staring into you like she can see who you are, like she knows just what you want, what you are made of. 

“What?” he grouses.

She tilts her head, like she can see through him. “You know, the easiest way to show you care for someone is to be there for them.”

He looks at her. “Okay?”

She heaves a sigh. “Stiles doesn’t—” she cuts herself off and casts her eyes to the side, as if searching for the right words. She sighs, blows her cheeks out with it. “There’s no one there for Stiles. What he and Jackson had, it - Jackson held onto what Stiles couldn’t carry.”

She pauses and stares at him. He stares back, unwilling to avert his eyes under her unrelenting scrutiny. “Jackson’s gone. We can’t save him from being the kanima. You get that, don’t you? Stiles has to kill Jackson. Peter is killing Jackson. Again.”

Derek nods, feeling something settle deep in his gut.

“And, Derek,” she continues, gentler, “ _you_ don’t have anyone either. The Pack has always got you, but it isn’t the same. You know that. So, maybe just try? Let him know that you can hold onto what he can’t carry.”

When she walks away, gravel crunching under her heels, Derek feels like he’s splayed out on an operating table, chest open for everyone to see what runs through his veins. Erica always has this weird way of knowing exactly where to strike, exactly what to say. She is loud and unapologetic, one of the scariest of them, but she’s perhaps the most human as well.

He shakes his head and starts stripping. He needs to run.

x

Stiles is dancing tonight and Derek feels like he can’t breathe.

He is doing fuck-all right now, Peter’s instructions were simply _make Stiles think you got a better job than him._ So, he is propped against one of the back walls of The Nemeton, trying to look as though he is keeping an ear out. It’s Boyd’s kill tonight, and Derek knows more than anyone that Boyd can handle himself. Thus, here he is, trying not to wolf out in the goddamn club.

Because Stiles isn’t just dancing, he’s having _fun_. He is smiling and smirking at the praise pouring in around him - and he looks like himself. He looks like the Stiles who never let shit bother him. It makes Derek’s skin itch, wondering if the Stiles who always smells like the embodiment of the word _ache_ is who he really is. Maybe all of them are just people in pain, finally letting it hurt. 

Derek keeps a close eye on him, making sure there aren’t any wandering hands making their way where they shouldn’t be. He’s got his gaze locked in on a blonde man inching closer to the stage when Stiles looks across the club at him. His eyes take on an almost manic glint when they lock onto Derek’s. He flips himself, maneuvering impressively into a split before swinging his legs to hang from the ring. Derek doesn’t really see it, though. His eyes are glued to Stiles’ chest, where his heart is beating louder than the music. 

The moment is broken when Stiles changes position and turns away. Derek needs some fresh air and a fucking _break_ from looking at Stiles.

x

Derek rarely finds himself in Stiles’ bedroom when the spark isn’t at The Den. Tonight, though, with Erica’s words still heavy in his chest, he paces the man’s room awaiting his return. Something within him bristles at the thought of Stiles out somewhere, doing one of the only things he thinks he is good for. Derek picks idly through the tomes on Stiles’ shelves, looks at the scatter of papers with hasty scribblings across them that litter his desk, flips through the crates of vinyls beside the bed.

He picks up the journal on Stiles’ makeshift nightstand and thumbs through it, pausing when the book opens to a page housing a worn photograph. He spends a long time staring at it, staring at Stiles. His gap-toothed smile and flushed cheeks, his bright eyes and scraggly hair. Looking more than anyone like the picture-perfect Happy Kid. This is who Stiles was. Who he could still be, had things been different. He is twenty-two; he could be off at college somewhere, coming home every holiday, in a long term relationship with someone who doesn’t treat him like fucking garbage. They know better than to fantasize about who they could have been. All they have is who they are now, however badly they may hate who that is. He slides the picture back into its spot and rests the journal where he found it, suddenly feeling indescribably heavy. 

The front door clicks just past two in the morning and Derek buries the rumble that threatens to vibrate low in his throat.

The first thing he notices when Stiles steps into the room is the fucking _smell_. It’s vile and it makes Derek immediately wrinkle his nose in distaste.

Derek hates how Stiles can make him feel like he doesn’t know which way is up. It’s so fucking irritating because he doesn’t do it consciously, yet he smirks nonetheless, like he’s pleased that he doesn’t even have to try.

He immediately snaps, “Where the fuck were you?”

Stiles shoots him a sidelong glance from where he is rifling through his drawers. He raises an eyebrow, eyes bright like they’re simply joking around with each other, like they do this all the time. In a way, he guesses they do. “You know exactly where I was.”

Derek does. He can smell the stench of another ‘wolf, the quiet hum of almost-contentment rippling with Stiles’ heartbeat, the remnants of friction on his skin.

He hates it. Hates that Stiles had a good time. It makes his jaw ache with the urge to grit his teeth. He tells Stiles how his main focus should be killing the kanima, which the younger man brushes off with a joke at Derek’s expense.

Stiles huffs a breath that sounds like a scoff, lazily holding out a hand and igniting it while he threatens Derek. All bark and no bite, as usual. All it does it make Derek feel even more like a fucking idiot for allowing Erica to worm her way into his head.

Derek bites his tongue against the insatiable need to snarl at Stiles. Blinks hard against the reminder of what happened to his family. God, Stiles is such a fucking _asshole_. He tries to replay what Erica said. He can’t think past the goddamn _stench_. 

He jerks up from his spot on the bed and closes the distance between them in three easy steps. He hears Stiles’ heart tick up slightly. _That’s right,_ Derek thinks, _be afraid_. He reaches out - it’s an involuntary movement. He isn’t sure what he means to do - whether he wanted to shove Stiles or pull him closer, but he settles for slapping his palm against Stiles’ shoulder, dragging it across his chest and along his neck to bury the foreign scent.

Stiles pushes him away by the arm and he barely resists baring his teeth in protest.

He turns to leave, clothes strewn over his arm for a shower. Derek thinks of what Erica said - _let him know that you can hold onto his hurt._

He catches the spark by the bicep, who turns around and demands, “ _What.”_

He’s tired of never being able to say what he wants to say. He’s Derek fucking Hale, he’s sick of Stiles antagonizing him every time he tries to speak.

“Can you fucking _stop_ for _one second._ You’re always on the defensive anytime I speak to you. Can you just listen for _once_ without instigating a fucking fight.”

He tries not to relish in how Stiles’ mouth falls slack before clicking shut.

Stiles is just staring at him, expression guarded. He gives nothing away and so, this, right now, is Derek taking a gigantic fucking step into the dark.

Stiles blinks at him, eyes rippling like liquid copper in the beam of the moon. For a moment, Derek genuinely worries that he just upset the careful balance they have created over the years. He and Stiles aren’t fucking nice to each other. As much as it drives him up the wall, their relationship is founded in antagonistic remarks and bitter slights.

Stiles releases a small breath and Derek feels it dispel the air around them. “I went home today,” the man confesses quietly.

Derek feels his expression slacken minutely before he catches himself. Stiles isn’t personal. He lets everything hurt him on his own, never shares anything with The Pack, never shares anything with _Derek_.

Stiles fixes his eyes on the clothing in his hold. Derek follows his gaze, idly watching a stray thread in the waistband of his sweatpants sway slightly in the air conditioner’s current. “My father - I ruined him, you know.”

Something deep inside Derek aches while Stiles continues talking, recognizes Stiles’ pain, how it mirrors the same strain Derek has shoved away in the darkest crevices of his soul. He remembers how after the fire he couldn’t find a single reason to continue living. He did anyway - look where that got him. Looking at Stiles now, watching him avoid Derek’s eyes like he is afraid to be vulnerable, is startlingly familiar. Derek is looking at himself.

Stiles is shaking, fingers clutched white-knuckled where they’re embedded in his change of clothing. “He hated me, sent me away to a place like this. But, I still—” Stiles takes a quick inhale of breath, swallowing down whatever it is that threatened to bubble out, quelling an eruption of feelings that have been forced to remain dormant.

A scorching coil of heat winds itself inside of Derek’s ribcage and seeks shelter behind his heart. He doesn’t even _like_ Stiles - so why the fuck does he just want to make him feel _better._ His hands burn with the urge to just fucking _do something._

“Stiles.”

Stiles shakes his head and holds a hand up to Derek, silencing him. “I don’t need you to say anything. I just needed to let it out. _Fuck._ ”

Derek thinks Stiles is done, is shocked when he takes another shaky breath and thrusts a hand out, gesturing to the room at large while he huffs a laugh. “And tonight I realized that no one is ever going to be him.

Derek just looks at him. “He’s your father, no one can—”

Stiles shakes his head, back and forth, again and again, like Derek has no idea what he is talking about. “No one will ever be Jackson.” He sounds hysterical. “I killed Jackson and now no one is ever going to be him.”

Oh. This again. 

Derek sighs. This isn’t in his wheelhouse, honestly. He is no stranger to grief, but he has had long enough to sit with it, long enough to be slightly out of touch with how it looks on other people. He doesn’t want to talk to Stiles about Jackson. He thought they were done with Jackson. He thinks about what Erica said and exhales another harsh breath through his nose. 

“You did not kill Jackson, Stiles. He got caught up in some tough shit. He knew the risks.”

Stiles didn’t kill Jackson. Jackson basically killed himself. Everyone knows what happens when you step out of line. 

“He only risked it because of me. He was happy here and I went and fucked it all up.”

This awakens something in Derek. Something he buried. Something he isn’t ready to face yet. Years of blaming himself, years of knowing that the people in his life who were perfectly happy are now dead because of him. They died because he fucked everything up. Derek will never stop feeling the cool texture of their gravestones, the hard grit against his fingertips when he traced their names. The death of his family is not like the death of Jackson, though. Jackson knew exactly what he was getting into. Derek’s family went to bed with the intention of waking up the next morning. They were swallowed up by flames while they slept, Jackson got a quick escape from his selfish desires. So, Derek doesn’t really empathize with Stiles, can’t really take this seriously. He wants to try, though. Because grief is grief is grief. Mourning is universal.

Derek waits until they lock eyes. “Jackson was an adult. He was perfectly capable of making his own decisions. You have to let go of the guilt, you can’t feel accountable for his downfall.”

Stiles’ eyes snap to him then, locking on his face. Derek is reluctant to think about what he might see there. Stiles’ eyes are flickering like flames and Derek wonders if it burns, wonders if holding onto all of that hurt bathes him in wildfire, if it instills within him an atomic _ache_ like it does for Derek.

Then, his eyes harden. “Hell will freeze over before I listen to Derek Hale’s advice about guilt.”

Derek resists the urge to let that hurt him. Stiles is upset that he is vulnerable, he wants to be on even ground. He wants Derek to hurt so they can both hurt. Derek is tired of letting other people hurt him. So he waits for Stiles to deflate. 

They just look at each other for a moment, and Derek wonders if Stiles has ever talked to anyone about this before. If Jackson ever knew this part of him, if the lawyer ever bothered to spend entire nights listening to him without thoughts of pressing him into the sheets. Some sick piece of Derek sends a thrill up his spine at the thought that he may be the only one to see this version of Stiles. He quickly destroys that thought. He will not allow himself to feel satisfied, vindicated, while watching someone else hurt. It reminds him of - he clenches his jaw. 

“Jackson made his choice, Stiles. He made his choice and he paid for it like he knew he would were he ever to be found out. If he wanted out so badly, a quick death was probably the best thing that could have happened to him.”

“You didn’t know him,” Stiles protests. But he knows Derek is right. Derek knows it, too.

“Did you?”

When Stiles stays quiet, Derek just shrugs. This has been too much for him for one night. He can’t believe he let Erica influence him, he knows better now. “Sometimes the person someone shows us and the person we choose to see are two different people.”

Stiles is studying him with calculating eyes, like he is figuring something out. Derek sidesteps him and heads for the door. 

He makes it back to his room in one piece, even though he feels a hundred years older and a million pounds heavier. He eyes the Ambien on his nightstand and waits for the spray of the shower to sound off from down the hall. It never does. It is dead silent, all he can hear is the regular white noise of The Den surrounding him. 

Derek takes a moment to breathe. He pushes down thoughts of - thoughts of _what_? Hugging Stiles? _Comforting_ Stiles?

Stiles is an asshole, he uses words as weapons and never fails to let you know that he is willing to stick his blade where it’ll cut deepest. Derek has spent five years teetering on the edge of ripping the man’s throat out. He needs to get a fucking grip - this time tomorrow, Stiles will go back to acting as though nothing happened at all.

Derek doesn’t let himself rest until after he hears the thrum of water running through the pipes in the wall.

x

Derek has only met John Stilinski once.

He cannot truthfully say that he remembers it, at least not in a larger capacity than fragmented glimpses drenched in the smell of smoke and the remnants of screams.

Looking back on it, he wonders if maybe he’d met Stiles, or seen him, then. If the ten-year-old had been sitting in his father’s office at the station or if he wasn’t there at all, instead watching reruns of sitcoms to the steady beat of a heart monitor.

Sometimes, Derek wonders if things would have been different between them, if at sixteen he’d been subjected to the babbling of a scrawny child instead of sitting alone while deputies mulled around him. It was stupid, looking back, but he’d compared it to being stuck inside an ant farm, trapped and mindless while other people stared at him like he was small, meaningless. As infuriating as Stiles is, sometimes Derek allows himself to think of what it would have been like to know him - before all of this, before Derek caved to Peter’s wishes, before Stiles lost his mother and by association his grip on himself. It’s dangerous to create retrospective fantasies, but sometimes Derek indulges them.

The house doesn’t look how he envisioned it in his head.

It’s hard to picture someone like Stiles growing up here, it seems too... _normal_. It’s hard to imagine someone like Stiles ever _being_ a child. He thinks back to the photograph. The spark has always seemed bigger than his body can physically contain, more powerful than anyone has any right to be. But, casting a glance around the front yard - Derek tries to see Stiles, age still located within single-digits, toddling around in the grass, running under a sprinkler, shrieking with laughter. He _can’t_.

Derek is sitting on the top step of the porch, elbows propped on his knees, hands dangling between them. His car is parked at the end of the driveway so that he can easily leave when the time comes. Every so often he slides his sleeve up to check his watch, but other than that, he simply listens to the insects buzzing low in the grass and the neighbor’s television show playing loudly from their open window. His brass knuckles are a heavy weight in his pocket, he brought them along just in case. He doubts he will need them, he plans on this being over quickly.

When the cruiser finally pulls up, Derek can hear the elevation of the sheriff’s heart rate. He waits patiently, catalogs the click of the seatbelt unlatching and the fizzle of the engine when the key is removed from the ignition. He rises when the sheriff comes to a stop on the cement path to the driveway, standing a few meager feet away from Derek.

The man looks good for his age, only just beginning to gray at the temples. His forehead is wrinkled, matching the corners of his eyes and mouth. He seems healthy. His clothing smells slightly sour and his uniform is creased all over. He settles pale eyes on Derek, it’s eerie how they remind him of Stiles’. All the man says in greeting is, “Hale.”

“Do you love him?” Derek demands, not in the mood to beat around the bush. He knows what he came here for.

If Derek had anyone at all left in this world, he would be fighting tooth and nail to see them, to be with them. John and Stiles are in the same fucking town and the man has never showed up, never even called. Derek knows John understands what it is like to lose everything. He has never seen someone who was okay with it. Looking at the man makes his blood boil for reasons unrelated to Stiles. 

“What?” The man looks off-balance, like that was the last thing he expected. Good, Derek hopes this is uncomfortable for him.

“Do you love him? Because, for some fucking reason, he still loves you.”

The sheriff blinks, Derek tracks his throat as it constricts on a swallow. “He’s my son.”

“I didn’t fucking ask if he was your son,” Derek snaps, feeling his gums itch, “I asked if you love him.”

“I—” he tapers off, scrubs a hand over his face and says to the ground, “of course I love him.”

Derek feels himself ease up slightly at the steadiness of the man’s heart. He knows how hard it is to love people like Stiles, but Derek is thinking of the Stiles he knows now. He tries to picture the Stiles in the photograph, tries to see him taking care of the man in front of him. Maybe Stiles wouldn’t be here at all if he had just been loved. The right way.

Derek waits for the man’s head to come back up, forcing eye contact. This mission is life or death, he can’t have this shit fucking up Stiles’ success ratio. If Stiles falters because of the man slumped across from him, Derek will be pissed.

“You don’t deserve his forgiveness. You are lucky, because everyone else who has ever wronged him is six feet beneath the fucking ground. But, he still loves you, and if you apologized to him, he would forgive you. You are his _only_ weak spot - that kind of weakness is wasted on a man like you.”

The man’s heart stutters. 

“Stiles is one of the most powerful members of our pack - we count on him - so I will kill you before you become the reason he fucks up.”

Derek huffs and stands there for a moment. He said what he needed to say. And the sheriff heard it. He is done here. Stiles doesn’t need anyone to fight his battles, and honestly, Derek doesn’t care enough to meddle in this shit more than he has to, but he feels better knowing that maybe he just fixed something instead of destroying it.

On his way past the man, he stops and runs a clawed finger over one of the wrinkles in his uniform. He digs it in until he’s certain the sheriff can feel it through the fabric. “And for fuck’s sake, iron your clothes. The board has a bad leg so you have to prop it against the wall. If a child could do it, so can you.”

With that, he smirks and makes his way back to his car. They have a mission tonight.

x

Entering the warehouse, there is an uncomfortable air of tension shimmering around Stiles. Derek knows better than to say anything, so he keeps himself carefully attuned to the man, poised to strike if things go south. 

They maneuver quietly through splintered boxes, the only sound coming from the intermittent creaks of the old beams in the ceiling, trails of dust trickling in their wake. Stiles inhales and moves to address him when the pain saturates every one of his nerve endings.

Derek hits the ground immediately, groaning through his teeth at the white-hot agony flooding his skull, pulsing behind his clenched eyes. He barely hears Stiles hiss at him, probably angry for all of the noise, when an ear-splitting screech makes the pounding in his head feel magnified. He knows it’s the kanima, but he can’t fucking _move._ His claws dig into his skin, he feels the warm paths of blood streaking his face, staining his fingers. He feels Stiles’ hands on him, hears him murmuring something about runes, when suddenly the hurt dissipates. Something is wrong, Derek feels an emptiness within him, an echoing hollow that once was whole. 

He hears Peter’s voice echo in his skull, bouncing along his cranium. _Use it wisely, my dear nephew._ His ears feel like they are bleeding but when he swipes his finger along the hinge of his jaw, down the length of his neck, there is no blood. 

He blinks up at Stiles and feels his heart stutter when the man goes pale.

“No, Derek, _fuck_ ,” Stiles whispers, his scent souring with fear. Stiles isn’t afraid of anything. Derek feels dread well up in his chest.

The kanima screeches again and Stiles reaches out and twists his hands into Derek’s shirt, gripping at the shoulders. Derek watches him, trying to understand what he is doing. Stiles has his eyes squeezed shut, mouthing words to himself that Derek can’t make out. It takes him a moment, but it clicks. Stiles is trying to get him out of here.

“Stiles, no, _stop it_ ,” Derek fists his own hands into Stiles’ shirt and shakes him, trying to divert his focus, get him to stop. The spark ignores him, his heart rate increasing. Rage thrums in Derek’s veins. He reaches up and grips Stiles’ chin. “Stiles, fucking _stop_.”

“Go,” the man breathes out, eyes opening. Derek blinks and he is in the backseat with Boyd.

“What the _fuck_ is going on?” Isaac demands, but Derek screams at him to go, to get them the fuck out. He doesn’t want to, but something inside of him forces the words to surface. The gravel crunches against the tires, sending dust flying behind them. Derek can’t look back, no matter how hard he cranes his neck, he _can’t_. 

He _left_ Stiles there. If he dies, it’s on Derek. Whatever happens to Stiles’ is on _him_.

Boyd eyes him warily. “Derek?”

“ _What_ ,” he snaps, hoping with every piece of himself that Stiles knows what the fuck he is doing.

Boyd doesn’t flinch, just sits up straighter. “Your eyes are red.”

He hops between the front seats, causing Isaac to swear and swerve sharply to the left. He slams the visor down and flashes his eyes into the mirror. The blazing crimson glints off of the glass and casts a weak glow around him.

He grips the edge of the seat just in time for his claws to shred into the leather. “ _Fuck!_ ”

Reaching into his pocket, he slides out his phone. The pre-typed message to Boyd is still idling on the screen. He swipes to Peter’s contact and calls him.

It goes straight to voicemail.

He calls again.

And again.

Each time he gets the automated message. He crushes his phone, bends the metal to pieces in his hand. He fucking _hates_ Peter. He has always hated him. Peter forced him into this, refused to help Talia, his _Alpha_. Made a joke out of her death like she was someone to be mocked rather than mourned. Peter has made life worse for all of them, they’ll never be the same. But, Peter was all he had left. Sometimes, when the light hit him just right, Derek could see his mother’s nose, the curve of her brow. Or when the man found something amusing, his lips would twist slightly to one side just like hers did. He had some of Laura’s mannerisms and Cora’s vernacular. Peter was the worst of the Hales, but he was the last of them. Now Derek has nothing.

He tries not to think of what awaits them at The Den. Tries not to imagine what happened to Peter. Tries not to think of Stiles, all alone at the warehouse. Stiles can handle himself better than any of them. But, that’s _Jackson_ back there. He left Stiles with Jackson and Deucalion’s pack, unprepared and unaccompanied. He hunches over and tugs on his hair. He needs to _think_.

Peter stayed behind with Erica.

He reaches for his phone and growls when he remembers he just fucking crushed it. 

“Boyd, call Erica.”

Boyd flashes his eyes and taps his phone screen twice, holding it up to his ear. 

The car is silent, all he can hear is the three of them breathing and the sound of the road outside. The line rings, and rings, and rings. 

“ _Hey, you’ve reached Erica. If it is actually important, you know where to_ —” Boyd hangs up before the voicemail message can finish. 

Derek has never felt like this before. Has never felt so out of control. Everything is crashing down around him and he has no idea what to do. 

“Call her again,” he demands, his eyes squeezed shut while he tries to breathe. He hears Boyd tap the screen again, the line ringing. 

“ _Hey, you’ve reached—”_

Derek snarls and slams his fist into the dash, denting it. Isaac swerves lightly at the disruption, but remains quiet. 

The drive feels like it takes years. 

As soon as they reach the lot, Derek is out of the car, barely restraining himself from shifting. 

He bursts through the doors and the first thing he registers is the quiet. He is sick and tired of the fucking quiet. 

The dining room is in shambles; chairs knocked over, dishes shattered along the floor, cracks in the walls as though things have been slammed into them. The living room is worse; feathers from the couch pillows covering nearly every surface, the arm chairs shredded, the tv face-down on the floor. Derek’s bedroom is destroyed, along with Boyd’s and Isaac’s. Stiles’ appears untouched. Derek pushes Erica’s door open and his fangs drop at the smell of blood and wolfsbane. Her room appears fine as well other than the minute signs of struggle; claw marks embedded within the floorboards, blood spatters at the bottom of the bedding, the leftover scent of distress. Derek stalks his way to Peter’s office, the crystal ashtrays are in pieces on the ground, the safe under his desk dented but unbreached, no signs of bloodshed. 

No one is here. 

He is too late. Again. He is always too late. 

He can hear Boyd snarling from Erica’s room, Isaac’s repetition of _what the fuck_ as he makes his own rounds through The Den. 

“You guys, just,” he takes a deep breath, runs his hands through his hair, pulls at it just to feel it burn. “You guys stay here, I am going back for Stiles.”

“Are you serious?” Isaac explodes. “What makes you think they didn’t get the drop on us? I bet they snuffed Stiles the second we left the—”

Derek grips him by the collar of his shirt, his vision bleeds red. He doesn’t know how Peter did this, how his mother did it, he doesn’t know how to be powerful. How to be in charge. For now, he chooses to be like Peter. He knows he will fucking regret it later, but he is out of options. “I am your fucking Alpha now,” he snarls. “I won’t offer you as many chances as Peter did.” Isaac twists his mouth into a scowl but smooths his shirt out and steps back, averting his eyes and tilting his neck. 

Derek holds his hand out by his side, palm up. “Boyd, let me see your phone,” he demands, eyes still on Isaac. 

The man wordlessly hands it over and Derek quickly makes his way outside, dialing Peter again. 

Voicemail. 

He dials again. 

Voicemail. 

He calls again, this time the line clicks. 

“I am afraid Peter cannot come to the phone right now, can I take a message?” a woman says over the line. It’s clear that she is smiling. 

Derek growls, “Where the fuck is he?”

“Who is the _he_ you are referring to? Your uncle or the spark? I am going to need specifics, I’m afraid. You know, not too good with faces and whatnot.”

His claws dig into his palm, he can feel blood pooling there. 

“Who are you?”

“Telling you would ruin all the fun, don’t you think? Don’t worry, though, your spark is just fine. A little uncooperative, but that is nothing some paralytic won’t fix.”

Derek grits his teeth. “You have no idea who you are fucking with.”

“Don’t I?” she laughs. “I am not scared of a brand new Alpha playing dress up in mommy’s clothes.” 

Derek squeezes his eyes shut, the overhead light making his eyelids appear blood red. Why is it so difficult to breathe. She says, “Do you know what _King Cobra_ does to the people who fuck with him?”

When he says nothing, she laughs. “Let’s hope you don’t have to find out.”

The line goes dead.

Derek pockets Boyd’s phone so it does not meet the same fate as his. 

_That is nothing a little paralytic won’t fix._

“God damn it,” he screams through his teeth. He can’t do this without Peter, Erica, _and_ Stiles. The Pack will fall apart, they are nothing without their key players. They can’t function without them - whether they are dead or not. 

He doesn’t remember getting into the Camaro. Can barely remember the drive. When he gets to the warehouse, he knows it is empty. He doesn’t have to go in. There is no heartbeat. No Stiles, no Deucalion, no kanima. Nothing. 

The smells make his face shift, he is no stranger to the smell of fear. But it’s new, he has never known Stiles to be afraid. It makes him feel off-balance. He smells Lydia, too, he knew they couldn’t fucking trust her. He knows all about scary women. 

Derek returns to the only place he can think of, eyes burning red. 

He beats his fist on the door, uncaring as to who he disturbs. He is not in the mood right now. 

He waits five seconds, then slams his fist into the door again. It swings open. 

John Stilinski is standing there with his gun aimed at Derek, eyes red-rimmed and bleary. “What the hell is your problem, Hale?”

“You said you love him. He is your son and you love him?”

John reluctantly lowers the gun, his face creasing. “I already told you, kid, of course I—”

“Then show me everything you have on Deucalion.”

The man blinks at him, his mouth set in a grim line. He nods once and steps aside, motioning for Derek to come in. 

  
  


x

  
  


It turns out he has slim to fucking nothing. 

John exhales harshly through his nose when Derek snaps as much at the man.

“How the hell do you think this works, kid? The same goes for the case files on you and the other members of your group - they are little more than the manila folder. That’s what you guys pay me to make sure of.”

Derek tells him what he knows and the sheriff calls Danny, he can tell because the man answers on the other line with a polite, “Mahealani.”

Derek stands straight-backed and ready to run until he hears the vehicle pull up outside. 

When Stilinski opens the door, Danny and Derek make eye-contact. It’s loaded, and Danny hesitates at the threshold for a moment, trying to decide what to do. When he steps through, he clears his throat and holds a hand out to Derek. “Hey, I’m Danny Mah—”

“Oh, cut the shit. Do you guys think I was born yesterday? Jesus Christ,” Stilinski scoffs. 

Danny actually has the decency to look embarrassed. Derek just rolls his eyes and gestures at the sheriff, an invitation for him to tell the other man what is going on. 

Derek has no interest in whatever technological bullshit Danny is about to do to try and trace the call. He doesn’t know how it works, Mahealani gets paid a pretty penny for it, so Derek thinks it is best that he stay within his pay grade. 

He shakes his head, turning his attention back to the documents in front of him. Stilinski has everything slotted neatly inside a box labeled _COBRA_. Derek flips through Deucalion's folder - there is an incident report from when he was a teenager, a mugshot taken when he got busted for marijuana possession at a traffic stop. The twins are clean. Kali has a report of a domestic disturbance and a minor assault charge that was later dropped. Ennis is eerily clean, too clean. Derek is half-heartedly flipping through Morrell’s when he jolts upright. 

When she was a teenager, she was taken into the station after a car accident involving someone driving under the influence. She was later picked up by her next of kin. It is stamped clear as day in the report. She left the station with her brother. 

Alan Deaton. 

Derek feels his face shift. “ _God fucking damn it!_ ”

Danny looks up and says, “Uh.”

Derek is out the door, Stilinski hot on his heels, firing questions at him. Derek slips into his car, the man tailing him in his cruiser. 

The vet clinic looks different at night. Derek can smell the electric tang of magic. Someone has been here. 

The front looks fine, the exact same as when Derek followed Morrell here. Same sleek white stickers pasted to the pane on the entrance, detailing the phone number and business hours. There’s glass on the pavement, though. A trail that leads to a shattered window on the side of the building. 

There’s blood. Human blood. 

He slams his fist into the remaining glass and the sheriff swears from behind him. He hoists himself through the window and walks around inside. A few of the dogs in the kennels whine low in the back of their throat. There’s vials all over the floor, needles and tools scattered everywhere. There was definitely a struggle. And they definitely lost. 

Derek leans against the wall and takes a moment to breathe. To think.

He has never been good at this. He has never known how to call the shots. Where they go from here is completely within his jurisdiction and he has no fucking clue where to start. 

The sheriff’s phone rings from outside and Derek knows it is Danny. He just fucking knows it. He doesn’t listen in because he can’t. He just looks down at his hands and tries not to fall apart. He never thought he would have to experience losing everything a second time. Experience a complete and utter sense of helplessness. He almost forgot how it feels. 

When he hears Stilinski’s boots crunching the glass as he approaches the window, he braces himself. Waits for what he knows the man is about to say. 

“Danny got a location,” he says solemnly. 

Derek looks at him, can read the reluctance in the lines of his face. 

He raises his eyebrows at the older man, waiting for him to fucking spit it out. 

Stilinski sighs and scrubs a hand over his tired eyes. “They’re at the Hale house.”

Everything turns red. It fucking burns. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> basically just stiles being an asshole about derek's feelings (are we even surprised at this point)
> 
> brief mentions of / allusions to kate 
> 
> introspection about grief and traumatic events (?)
> 
> borderline extensive involuntary gay pining (get it together, derek, gosh)


	8. act v

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> full disclosure - i did not really enjoy writing this chapter KJDHAFSJKKA
> 
> this bad boy clocks in at about 11.4k which is kind of a lot but still not really as long as i was hoping. i barely read over it so if there are any glaring continuity errors, too bad <3 anyway, i really struggled with writing it because, even though it is basically the entire motif of this fic, i do not particularly like writing torture / fighting. stylistically, the emotional side of things is where i think my strength lies, so writing out scenes that rely more on technical descriptions is really difficult for me. and this entire chapter is basically just that LMAO go figure. also, i tried my hand at dual pov in this to make it easier to write, so please tread carefully haha
> 
> i hope you all like it and do not hate me too much. there are a couple of i guess "plot twisty" things that happen that somewhat, in my opinion, feel slightly unprecedented. but oh well. i am very excited to see your reactions to one particular part, but i am going to stop talking. idk when the next chapter will come because i have a very busy schedule ahead of me, but hopefully it won't be too long ! the end chapter count is most likely going to increase but i am waiting it out just in case. 
> 
> no beta because i have no self respect + major warnings in end notes (:

  
  


**Act V - Delirium**

“There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.”

  
  
  


Stiles is no stranger to waking up in places he doesn’t recognize. This is a little different, though. 

The first thing he notices is that he is shackled with iron. Magic is out of the equation. He is bound by rope to a chair.

He cranes his neck back, looks around and realizes that he is no longer at the warehouse - which means it _was_ too easy. Deucalion’s pack does not operate out of it.

From the limited movement he’s allotted, he can tell that the building he’s in is charred, smells like fire and ash. Everything around him is deep brown and gray to the point of almost-black. He is in the husk of a place that once stood. He throws his head back and laughs. Fucking laughs like this is hilarious, because it is. Could this be any more cliché? 

He catches his breath, feeling a little delirious. “Please tell me we are not at the Hale house right now,” he says to no one in particular. 

When he is met with silence, he clicks his tongue and sighs through his nose. “Alright, then. Can one of you tell me what happens next? I’m sorry to say that I have never watched _The Godfather_ all the way through, so I’m not quite sure—”

He grits his teeth when someone hits him in the side of his face from behind. Hard. He rolls his jaw and huffs. “Fine. I didn’t want spoilers anyway.”

When he blinks the spots from his vision, Deucalion is standing directly in front of him in a deep green suit. He’s leaning lazily on his cane, clawed hand gripped loosely around the hissing cobra. His glasses are different than the ones Stiles met him in.

Next to him is the woman who was always with Daehler at The Nemeton.

“As soon as we counteracted your charms - I recognized you. Your scent. And you said you didn’t know much about magic. Color me surprised.”

“It’s been years since then,” he points out sweetly.

Deucalion tuts and steps forward before crouching in front of him. “It’s a shame you work for The Pack. You sound too pretty to get all mangled up in a place like this.” He slides a wandering palm to the strap on Stiles’ thigh, unsheathing the dagger held there. He leans back and twists it idly in a gloved hand, like he has all the time in the world. Deucalion reaches in his breast pocket and retrieves a vial of kanima venom. 

“Do you know what a sedative is, Stiles?”

He stays quiet.

“It’s a full body relaxer. It helps people fall asleep - but, on the streets, it’s used to unwind.”

The man’s lips quirk up. “We are revolutionizing the drug trade. Phenobarbital and diazepam are getting harder to acquire. This - this stuff is incredible. Just one drop will do the trick, it’s so potent. It even got The Hunters to work with us. You know what a rigid bastard Chris Argent can be, I’m sure.”

“So, what? You’re lacing our coke to put yourself at the top of the market?”

Deucalion’s mouth turns down into a frown, the space between his eyebrows creasing. “Lacing your coke?”

“Yes - with Daehler and whoever else, you were contaminating our supply.”

The man looks genuinely affronted. “What use would I have, little spark, contaminating the supply of one of the largest coke dealers in California? It’d be bad for business.”

Stiles tries to bury his confusion. “To get back at Peter. He blinded you, you wanted revenge.”

Deucalion laughs. “There are far more gratifying ways to get back at Peter. I know better than to start a gang war and destroy my business over a petty grudge.”

“But, you got one of us to call the feds.”

The look that passes over the man’s face can only be described as gleeful. Overjoyed. “Oh, yes. About that. I suppose one of you did call the authorities. But, I didn’t really have much to do with that until after the fact, I must admit.”

He picks at his claws, runs his tongue lazily over his teeth in a way that coaxes the hair on Stiles’ neck to stand upright. His lips curl into a smirk. “Come on out, darling. Don’t be shy.”

Stiles knows. He can just feel it. He knows exactly who is about to step into his line of sight. The cadence of their steps, the weight of their footfalls. He knows who he is about to see and he feels fucking sick. Angry. Tired. Alarmingly unsurprised. 

Her heels are bright red. The ones he got her for her birthday two years ago. Stiles grinds his teeth together and forces himself to meet her eyes. Erica looks devastated, he will give her that. It is hard, sometimes, to know the precise severity of your actions. But, he can’t cut her too much slack, she knows as good as Stiles does about the inner workings of these things. She had to have had a rough idea of how this would turn out. It always sucks to pay the price for your actions. Consequences are a real kick in the head. 

She looks at him, straight in the face. Resolute, but almost apologetic all the same. Stiles refuses to acknowledge the inkling of forgiveness brimming in his veins. Stiles will take this betrayal to his grave. They both know that. 

Her eyes shimmer and gleam under the overhead lights. But, she doesn’t cry. Tears won’t change anything. She obviously thinks she owes Stiles some sort of explanation. Whether that comes from the residual sense of pack obligation she feels or if she genuinely did not want to hurt him, he can’t tell. Regardless, Stiles really doesn’t want to hear it. She has strung him from a tree, tightened the noose and left him to suffocate. “I couldn’t do it for the rest of my life,” her tone is pleading, she wants Stiles to understand. He will never understand, his loyalty is too strong to be broken by things he knows he can never have. “You know that. This - The Pack - is not forever. There is more out there.”

Stiles purses his lips so he doesn’t snarl at her. “This is forever for _me_. This is the rest of _my_ life.”

Her mouth twists unhappily and she looks away, like she didn’t want to hear that, like she had this happy little ideology in her head where Stiles would know where she is coming from. But, she knew it. She did. Stiles is helpless in the hands of Deucalion and Erica is out. There is always a price. Stiles is paying hers. 

He looks down, done with this conversation. He doesn’t really want to look at her anymore, something dark and lava hot coiling behind his heart. The one person he would have called a friend, slipping like sand between his fingertips. It doesn’t matter. Another thing to be tucked away, never mourned. 

He hears someone step in, usher Erica away. Good riddance. He swallows a few times until he can breathe properly beyond the lump in his throat. He listens to the click of her heels until he can no longer hear her. He just prays, for her sake, that it is fucking worth it. Never bury more than you can live with. Regret will kill you before anything else. 

Deucalion clicks his tongue. “What a turn of events. If I were in your shoes, I would be distraught.”

“Good thing you’re not in my shoes, then.”

Deucalion just chuckles, striding forward. He twirls the dagger in his fingers, skillfully avoiding the edge of the blade. He leans down and rests it across Stiles’ lap, freeing his hand so that he can lay it on Stiles’ shoulder, trail it up to caress his face. His fingertips feel around, the tips of his fingernails scratching at Stiles’ skin, catching on the bridge of Stiles’ nose, before dipping down to his mouth. He slips two between his lips and Stiles bites down as hard as he can.

The man hisses and then barks a startled laugh, the holes from Stiles’ teeth quickly mending themselves.

Deucalion tilts his head. “Ah, that’s cute.” He snaps his fingers at the woman standing beside him. “Jennifer, hold his mouth open since he wants to be difficult.”

She doesn’t reply, just steps forward and plants her hands on Stiles’ face. He fights as hard as he can, thrashing against her roaming touch. She punches him in the jaw, a surprisingly solid hit, sliding her fingers behind his teeth when his mouth goes slack at the blow.

Deucalion thumbs the top off the vial and deposits a single drop on the flat of the blade. He slides it around slowly, the green-tinted slime sloping languid strokes across the polished knife.

He reaches inside Stiles’ mouth and pulls out his tongue. “This will make Jennifer’s job so much easier.” 

He plants the side of the blade on the flat of Stiles’ tongue, sliding it so that he laps up every last bit of the venom that was dripped onto the metal. He shoves it back between his lips and Jennifer slams his mouth shut, nearly crushing his jaw in her hold.

Stiles immediately goes boneless, slumping forward.

From this angle, he notices for the first time that Lydia is bound to a chair across from him. Another chair to her left holding someone he cannot see properly. 

“All we want from you is your loyalty. With you, we could make millions.”

“Go to hell,” Stiles slurs out.

“We have ways of persuasion, baby mage. By the time Jennifer is done with you, you’ll be begging to join us.” 

“I’ll die before I work with you.” 

“So be it,” Deucalion dismisses easily.

Stiles grits his teeth. Or, he tries to. “There is nothing you could take from me,” he manages to get out. “I have already lost everything.”

Stiles cannot imagine one thing Deucalion could ruin. 

Deucalion scoffs. “This is where naivety works against you, Stiles. There is always something left to lose.”

Stiles hears Deucalion snap his fingers. “Jennifer, wake him up.”

“You got it, boss.”

He can hear groaning, muffled noises of discomfort. Rustling as whoever is bound to the chair beside Lydia begins to shift uneasily. 

“Now the fun can begin,” Deucalion says with a crazed sort of delight, and Jennifer laughs. “Morrell, darling, would you be a dear and hold Stiles’ head up for me?”

Stiles can hear light steps sounding from behind him before cool fingers slip around his jaw, wrenching his head upward. He can see better from this vantage point, can see Lydia curled forward, head dangling low. Stiles can see the other person now, similarly positioned, but conscious. 

Jennifer lifts the other man’s head, and Stiles feels his blood run cold. 

A sandbox in first grade. The cherry red cover of an inhaler. Laughing until his stomach hurt. Screaming at video games until Melissa scolded them. 

He would know Scott McCall anywhere. He just wishes he didn’t have to know him here. God fucking damn it. He closes his eyes for a moment, overwhelmed. The hurt is palpable, the pain in his chest so strong it feels for a moment as though it could actually kill him. He wishes it fucking would. 

Scott looks at him, his eyes swimming with confusion. He has a nasty cut below his left eye, lazily trickling blood. His lip is split as well. He looks like he put up a fight. Stiles averts his eyes when Scott mutters his name, sounding lost and hurt and betrayed. 

Deucalion twirls the dagger, humming thoughtfully. “You had a stint on the streets, Stiles. Is that right?”

Stiles says nothing. 

The other man huffs a laugh. “I thought so. Did you ever have the misfortune of witnessing what the Bite does to a human?”

He had. When he was sixteen, some random junkie was bitten right in front of him. Stiles will never forget how he convulsed, how he shook while the veins in his head and arms pushed to the surface, straining under his skin. He will never forget how the boy screamed in pain, screamed that it burned. Begged for death like it was something desirable, something better than what was done to him. He sobbed until his heart finally gave up when his body couldn’t handle the transformation. Stiles vomited after it was said and done, right there on the pavement, spine trembling. 

He’d blocked it out. He feels disappointed in himself when his heart picks up at the memory and Deucalion chuckles. 

“Ah, you did. Perfect.”

Stiles takes a moment to think about this. Think about what this means. He assesses the environment again and he feels his stomach churn, his breath catch in his chest. 

“No,” it is the closest he has ever come to pleading in his life. He tries to muster up the bravado he is so well-known for. “I am sure you want to hurt me. I killed your kanima. I ruined your plans. I know you want to torture me for it. So do it, just torture me.”

Deucalion smiles. A shark smile. It looks like Peter’s. “Stiles,” he tuts, “you of all people should know that you can torture someone without laying a single finger on them.”

He strides over to where Scott is still groaning lightly, pointlessly attempting to struggle in Jennifer’s hold. Deucalion crouches down until he is right in the younger man’s face. Stiles is looking at Deucalion’s back, but he watches as the Alpha slides his glasses to the top of his head, how Scott’s eyes widen as he is bathed in a red glow while Deucalion flashes his irises at him. 

“Poor, Scott,” he coos mockingly. “Your heart is beating so fast. Are you scared?” 

Deucalion slides his hand along Scott’s chest, slithers it upward until his fingers are curled around the man’s throat. “There’s no need to be afraid. I am sure you won’t feel it,” Stiles watches his fingers become claws, digging into the skin of Scott’s neck. “Much.”

With that, he drops his hand down and grips hard at Scott’s forearm. Stiles is not proud to say that he begs when the man brings his friend’s wrist to his lips, elongates his fangs and sinks them deep into the flesh. The fingers along Stiles’ jaw tighten when Scott begins to scream, holding him there while the man shakes. 

Scott is shrieking. Harrowing wails of agony that are worse than the cries that spilled from any one of the people Stiles has tortured. He is seizing in pure, unadulterated pain and his screams feel like serrated blades dragging themselves through Stiles’ mind. 

He writhes and pleads and all Stiles can do is squeeze his eyes shut. He is paralyzed, held up and forced to watch while the one person in this world who didn’t know him as this tainted, alternate version of himself goes through a transition that Stiles would not wish upon his worst enemy. He can’t even fucking cover his ears. So, he closes his eyes, envisions himself somewhere else. Anywhere else. 

Someone slaps lightly at his face. He squints his eyes open and Deucalion looks warped with the way his vision is swimming. 

“Keep your eyes open for me, baby mage. You’re going to miss all the fun.” 

Deucalion walks over to where Lydia is still curled forward. Stiles dutifully studies her, ignores how Scott is shaking in his peripheral. How he is crying. 

“Now this one,” Deucalion begins, tone almost reverent as he strokes a gentle hand along Lydia’s slack face, “this one is truly one to watch for.” He just stands there for a moment. “She is smart. Incredibly so, wouldn’t you say?”

He trails his fingers down her arm, gripping her much more gently than he had Scott. Caressing her, almost. It makes Stiles feel sick. Scott is still screaming. 

He plants a soft kiss to the skin stretched along the inside of her wrist, her tendons creating long lines that frame her pulse. When he sinks his teeth in, Stiles can almost hear it. The way the unmarked flesh caves to the bones, the way the blood flows, finally free. 

Stiles closes his eyes again, prepared for her to scream and cry and shake. She doesn’t. She still dangles there, limp with unconsciousness. Deucalion pulls away and frowns. He brings her wrist up again, administers a second bite just inches away from the first. Nothing. Her other arm, a bite. Nothing. 

Again. Again. Again. 

Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. 

Deucalion snarls, head snapping in Stiles’ direction. “What the fuck is this?” he demands. He isn’t addressing Stiles, his words are for the woman behind him. Morrell. 

The hands lose their grip on his jaw and his head drops forward. He inhales sharply in surprise, staring down at the charred floor. When he raises his eyes, he can see from Lydia’s elbows downward. He is grateful that he can no longer see any part of Scott. “I have never seen anything like that before,” is spoken softly from behind him, tinted with confusion. 

Stiles cannot even begin to process what this means. Scott won’t stop screeching, sobbing, begging. Lydia still sits there, slumped, blood pouring from the holes along her arms. If the bites do not kill her, the blood loss certainly will. 

Deucalion rolls his shoulders and steps away, strides toward Stiles. “Now, for you,” he taps his chin with his forefinger, grinning. “Without magic, you’re as human as the rest of them. That must be so degrading, being diminished to nothing.”

Scott’s cries are hoarse, now. No more sound left to inflate his screams. His throat must be shredded. It has to hurt, burn like fire, to make any noise at all. Stiles swallows. 

Deucalion tuts. “It really is a shame, Stiles. We could have used your field of expertise.” He tilts Stiles’ chin upward with his forefinger, grins right in his face. “You see, a kanima can be made. I can create another. And if that one were to be killed, then I could simply make one more. I am sure you see where this is going.” He drops Stiles’ chin and squats down on his haunches so that Stiles is still looking at him. He pulls a handkerchief from his coat pocket and dabs at Lydia’s dried blood at the corners of his lips. “It must be infuriating, to know that Jackson died for nothing. But, a good lesson to learn early on is that nothing is irreplaceable.” 

Stiles feels himself close off at the mention of Jackson. That’s right, Stiles killed him. He almost forgot. 

“I thought you were supposed to be the chatty one,” Deucalion says idly while raising himself to stand. Stiles hears him click his tongue. “You don’t have much to say now, do you?”

Scott cries. Says the word _please_ over and over. Begs for death. Stiles takes a deep breath. 

“I have nothing to say to you.”

Deucalion purses his lips and then sighs explosively. “Fine. I’ll talk.”

Stiles exhales. Takes another painful breath. 

“You aren’t the only one who can do magic. Though, I will concede that your particular brand is a little more difficult to find.”

He feels someone step up behind him, slide their hands along his shoulders, planting them where each junctures to his neck. The person slips down, lips by his ear. “Have you ever heard of a mentalist?” she whispers, then laughs. Laughs and laughs like a fucking maniac. 

“Jennifer can do a thing or two. Pain weakens a strong will, wouldn’t you say?”

Deucalion’s footsteps creak while he walks until his shoes are out of Stiles’ sight. Jennifer snakes her hands over the nape of his neck, moving them so her thumbs rest behind his ears, her other fingers flat over his temples, fingertips curling over the curve of his cranium.

“Sleep tight,” she coos.

His head feels like it has been filled with water as his eyes roll back.

He is no longer paralyzed. He cranes his neck and stares at where his hands are bound to the arms of the chair. He looks over at Lydia, at Scott - still crying - at the house around him. He blinks back down at his arms when he feels a burning sensation. His skin is crawling, rippling while things slither under the surface. It hurts, it hurts so badly but he cannot move. He is trapped and he can’t make it stop. He clenches his hands into fists but it does not help. He grits his teeth through the pain, bites his tongue against the scream bubbling in his throat. 

He closes his eyes and when he opens them he is in the boys’ locker room. He knows exactly what is about to happen. It is a Tuesday, fifth period gym class. He sees himself, young and scrawny. His eyes are watery when he confides in Scott. “I just want her to die already!” he hears himself grit out, screaming it through his teeth. Scott wraps his arms around Stiles’ shoulders while he shakes. “I just want her to die. I want it to finally be over.”

He blinks and he is outside. The sun is dampening his neck with sweat while everyone is dressed in black from their necks to their ankles. He is staring up at the sky, looking at it through the slivers in the leaves of the tree behind him. He knows where he is. He will never forget that fucking tree. When he drops his head to look forward, he knows exactly whose casket is going to be in front of him. He can hear it, slightly muffled, like he is submerged in water - his dad’s eulogy. The slur in his words. How his family members dropped their heads into their hands, red with embarrassment. How his own neck went hot, the tips of his ears blistering, ashamed of the man behind the podium, humiliated by the way he turned her funeral into a joke. When they lowered her casket into the Earth, he idly remembers how his mother liked bugs. _Good,_ he thinks morbidly, but it isn’t him thinking it. It is the shell of her son, sitting in his too-big suit. _Good, because now she is surrounded by them._

“Stop it,” he growls. “ _Stop_.”

A tinkling laugh reverberates in his skull and suddenly he is in his living room. His old living room. The one that had her couch, his dad’s recliner, their family photos. The television is on in the background, playing the weather channel. They never changed it. They didn’t watch much while she was in the hospital. Now she is gone, food for worms, cue the laugh track. It is eighty-three degrees in Beacon Hills, a Thursday afternoon with a twelve percent chance of rain. His dad is day drinking. He never stops, really. Stiles does get it, okay. He does. He knows that it hurts. He doesn’t know if he will ever love someone like his dad loved his mom. He used to think he would be lucky to feel such a thing. But, now, looking at his dad pull from a bottle like a lifeline, he thinks he never wants to feel love like that. The kind that makes you miserable. 

His dad sits in a chair at the dining table. Hunched over, tapping his fingers against the table-top. He takes another swig, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and looks directly at Stiles. 

“You killed your mother, you hear me,” he says with certainty, like he believes it. “You killed her.” He looks back at the bottle, picks it up and tilts it left and right, watching the liquid pool on either side. He takes another sip and and hisses through his teeth after, like it burns. It burns Stiles, too. “You killed your mother, Stiles,” he grits out, “and now you’re killing me.”

He scoots his chair back, raising himself to stand. He lists sideways and grips the edge of the table to right himself, gesturing at Stiles with the hand that’s curled around the bottle’s neck. “You are _killing_ me.”

Stiles knows. It feels like he is dying, too. He knows what is about to happen. It still breaks something deep inside of him. Ducking to avoid the bottle as it shatters in the doorway behind him. “You are killing me!”

“ _Stop_ ,” he demands again. 

He’s at The Den. It’s dark and he is curled up in his bed. He rolls over and is met with the sight of Jackson, flat on his back with an arm slung across his eyes. It’s hot out, the window cracked and leaking in humid air. The covers are bunched at the man’s hips, showcasing how his chest rises and falls while he breathes. Stiles just blinks sleepily and looks at him. Drags his eyes across the planes of his abdomen, up his ribs to his throat, resting on his face. He just looks at his lips, the jut of his nose. He feels something warm and pleasant well up behind his sternum. Something he has never really experienced before. He is content. It makes a small smile tug at his mouth when he closes his eyes to fall back asleep. 

“He’s so pretty when he isn’t a kanima. What a shame.”

“Shut up,” Stiles snarls, squeezing his eyes shut. “Shut the fuck up!”

He’s eighteen. Fresh out of initiation, battle-hardened. A different person from when he left, a different person from who he is now. He remembers this, too. He can’t stop thinking that - of course he fucking remembers these things, she is dredging up his memories. Forcing him to see the worst parts of himself. 

He remembers this, though. The anniversary of the fire. He remembers seeing Derek through the crack in the man’s bedroom door. Seated on the edge of his bed, curled forward so his elbows were resting just above his knees, hands fisted into his hair. He was trembling, shaking all over, vibrating like a live wire conducting the familiar current of loss. 

Stiles remembers this because it was the first time he saw Derek as a person. The humanity seeping through, forcing Stiles to acknowledge that Derek might be like him. All he knew was initiation - the brutal fighting, the harsh slights about his family, their biting words. Stiles lost his mom, something that hurts less and less every day. But, no matter how much the severity of the pain decreases, it will never go away. Stiles couldn’t imagine the stinging loss of his mother amplified, applied to four people on the same day. That’s the first time he let the thought cross his mind. Maybe Derek Hale isn’t so bad. 

“That’s cute,” Jennifer says. “You care about him. You guys are perfect for each other, husks carved out of loss. How poetic.”

Stiles tries to jerk in her grip. He’s still paralyzed, suddenly exhausted. All of his energy has been leeched out, he is powerless. He comes to, blinks the spots from his vision while staring at the floor. 

“That’s enough for now. I like to give just a little taste before I bring out anything too…” she drums her fingers on Stiles’ shoulders, “ _serious._ ”

Scott is mumbling, whimpering. No more screams. Stiles doesn’t think he can anymore. Jennifer wrenches his head up and he looks at Scott, the way he is sickly pale, drenched in sweat. The front of his shirt is dirty, stained, like he vomited on himself. The thought makes Stiles sick. The woman beside him is pretty, dark with dark hair, nice eyes. He guesses her to be Morrell. Stiles instantly despises her. Nothing good comes from pretty people caught up in things like this. 

“I think he is done,” Jennifer says excitedly, fingers tightening along Stiles’ jaw. 

Scott convulses, wrenches himself upward until Stiles can see the press of his ribs through his shirt, the fabric sinking in the valley above his lungs. He throws his head back and makes a visceral, primal, grating sort of sound that makes his trachea ripple beneath the skin on his throat. Stiles wants to look away but he can’t. He keeps his eyes open, watching. He did this. 

Scott presses up against the binds, his toes digging into the creaking floorboards while he raises himself up, tries to get away from the pain. He can’t. Stiles is sitting here watching Scott realize that he can’t. He still doesn’t look away. 

A movement to Scott’s left catches Stiles’ eye. Morrell is looking over Stiles’ head, eyes unblinking. She is standing straight-backed, rigid and focused. Her lips are moving minutely, but creating no sound. She is mouthing something. 

Scott finally becomes silent. He raises his head up, eyes closed. He takes a few ragged breaths, like when he used to have asthma attacks and scare Stiles half to death. He sits there, chest heaving. Then, he blinks open his eyes. 

They’re glistening harlow gold. 

Scott screams and, this time, it doesn’t sound agonizing. It sounds furious. He screams again and Morrell nods her head. Stiles blinks in surprise when the ground begins to shake, causing the legs of their chairs to tremble. He feels like he is going to topple over. 

Jennifer curses behind him and he hears Deucalion come into the room. The floor splinters and cracks at the force, breaking apart under the pressure. Jennifer steps from behind Stiles, hunched over into a half crouch to avoid miscellaneous pieces of debris. She comes to a stop in front of Morrell, head ducked close like she is going to say something, when Morrell slides her palm along Jennifer’s neck, the latter collapsing instantly to the floor. 

Deucalion turns his head sharply at the sound, but does nothing. Stiles remembers suddenly, without warning and apropos of nothing, that the man cannot see. Morrell grips Scott by the wrist, his claws slipping out. She uses them to slice her arm, blood seeping into her shirt sleeve.

“Jennifer, stop!” she cries, sounding confused and hurt. Stiles almost believes her. She sounds like she is struggling, like she is being fought. Deucalion growls, he can no doubt smell the blood, hear everyone’s erratic hearts. “Jennifer stop it,” he demands, stepping closer. When he gets close enough, Morrell drops down to her haunches, bracing her hands palm-down onto the ground while she forcefully arcs a leg outward, sweeping Deucalion’s legs from beneath him. On the fall, she grips his calf and chants something. Deucalion’s body lights up, glowing hot like wildfire, Stiles can feel it from where he is sitting. 

The shaking stops. Suddenly and without warning. Stiles is still dangling there, mind racing. He hears the door open, it creaks ominously in the palpable quiet. Scott is still growling, breathing heavy like a fucking freight train. Morrell’s breaths are labored, too. Footsteps sound, weighted and sure. 

“Good job,” the voice congratulates Morrell. Stiles knows that voice. Spent nearly a year with that voice. He strains his eyes, he knows those shoes. He knows this man. 

“Thank you,” Morrell says, breathless. 

Stiles knows him.

“Get ready, the cavalry is coming,” it’s all soft-edged, like it’s being said with a smirk. 

The shoes step, step, step, come to a stop right in front of Stiles. 

“Hello, Stiles,” he says. “We have got to stop meeting like this.”

  
  


x

  
  


Initiation consisted, essentially, of Stiles being tied to chairs. 

He was tied down, beaten by Derek, beaten by Peter, mentally manipulated by Peter, insulted by Derek - lots of bad things happened to him while he was bound to chairs. It was a _thing._

So, this time, near the end of training, when he was tied down, he expected bad things to happen.

What he did not expect, though, was Peter to bring in a man he had never been in contact with before. He’d seen him around The Den. Always in passing, always while he was on his way to something or somewhere important, brushing past Stiles in the halls. 

“I think you are ready to move on to the next stage, Stiles. I want to see how your magic responds to other magic.”

“Other magic?” Stiles questioned. He had never known another magical person. Well, other than - he clears his throat. 

That day, he met Alan Deaton, primarily an elementalist with mild abilities in other forms. That day, he learned how many healing runes it takes to stop receiving aftershocks, feeling flayed alive after having every water molecule in his body heated up until it felt like tar was sludging between his cells. 

  
  


x

  
  


Derek’s hand is covered in blood from driving it into the wall. 

The dogs are cowering in their kennels, ears back and tails between their legs. 

He hasn’t been to his home in - he doesn’t know how long. He can’t go back, is physically incapable. Derek knows when to let sleeping dogs lie - knows when he can’t handle something - and he cannot handle this. 

So, of course, _naturally_ , he would have to return against his will. By force, when he isn’t ready. Pieces of him are still there, torn open and left to rot. Stiles is there, probably looking at what used to be Derek’s home, where he and his family used to live. Where Derek still felt things like love and contentment. 

The sheriff is looking at him - it’s this _look_. Derek has seen it before, on other people. On his mother when Peter had it out for her. On Cora when their dog died. On himself when he lost everything. This lilt to the corners of your mouth, a crease to your brow, a sheen in your eye - a look that shows that something you care about has been compromised, tainted, taken and destroyed. The sheriff looks like that and Derek knows it is for Stiles. Derek almost wants to laugh - it is always too late, isn’t it. You can’t change things by wishing they were different. You cannot change someone by loving them. 

He feels delirious, thinking that. It just clicks in his head, echoing like a fucking mantra. _You cannot change someone by loving them._

“Well,” Derek manages to get out, “let’s fucking go.” 

He could drive there with his eyes closed. Could navigate the paths in his sleep. He grew up in these woods, had his first shift, first run, first hunt through these trees. 

He picked up Isaac and Boyd, The Den is on the way to the preserve. They were ready, already outside waiting, like they knew when he came back, it would be for them. He is behind the wheel, Boyd beside him with Isaac in the back seat. 

It feels bizarre, in an out-of-body, surreal sort of way, to be running back to a place that resembles so much loss, holds tight to so much of his pain. It feels unreal to be chanting under his breath, to be hoping, praying, _begging_ , that Stiles is not another person he has to tally off, dead inside of the walls of that dreaded fucking house. That Erica isn’t there either. That Peter is not yet another Hale lost to the horrors of that home. He doesn’t think he would survive another Hale House Funeral. 

He doesn’t want Stiles to die. That is probably the most shocking revelation of the night. He does not want Stiles Stilinski to die. If he is dead in that goddamn house, Derek doesn’t know what he is going to do. He isn’t quite sure how to exist in a life void of him, not after everything has centered around him for so many years. 

When they pull up, Stilinski not far behind, the ground begins to shake. 

“What the fuck,” Boyd and Isaac exclaim simultaneously. Derek quickly assesses their surroundings, eyes flitting along the treeline, around the perimeter of the house. It looks exactly like the last time he saw it. It hurts the same. He swallows. 

They’re out of the car quick, doors slamming in near perfect succession of one another. 

The ground is shaking so hard the house is creaking and groaning, the base of the trees surrounding them sounding as though they could snap. Derek strains and he can hear the noise inside, the heartbeats, he hears groaning, breathing, smells blood. He smells wolves, but deeper, beneath the surface, he smells home. God fucking damn it. 

He rolls his shoulders and looks at Boyd, then Isaac. They both nod and he nods back. Deucalion’s pack has no idea who they are fucking with. They are about to find out.

  
  


x

  
  


Deaton unshackles and unties him quickly, Stiles grunts when he hits the floor, face down.

“You’re in luck that a counteraction spell for this exists.” 

This feels familiar. The weird, almost familial connection he always had with the man. After all, they are made of the same things. The universe constructed Stiles, and she used the same things to construct Deaton. They’re connected, and Stiles is reluctant to admit that he missed it. Having someone on his side. 

“There’s a counteraction spell for everything,” Stiles says snippily, muffled by the floor. He’s repeating Deaton’s words from years ago, verbatim. 

Deaton just laughs and Stiles feels the man’s fingers press into his back, tracing symbols. His body is vibrating, his magic thrumming now that it is free to move. When Deaton is done, he tingles, his limbs regaining feeling. Stiles pushes himself up from the ground just as the door bursts open. 

Stiles is so fucking tired of hearing gunshots. He rolls along the floor while Morrell and Deaton duck. He rights himself when he is beside Scott, pushes his weight into the side of the man’s chair, toppling him over. Scott curses and Stiles follows him down, lying on his side next to him. 

“I’m gonna get you out of these,” Stiles hisses, burning the ropes, “and you are gonna run like hell until this is over. You got me?” 

When Scott doesn’t say anything, Stiles stops, trying desperately to ignore the chaos around him. “ _You got me?”_

Scott nods frantically and Stiles undoes the last of his binds. When Scott gets free, he lurches forward and catches himself, both hands on either side of Stiles’ shoulders to regain balance. They look into each other’s eyes for a moment, time suspended. Another gunshot sounds and the ground begins to shake when Scott blinks and volleys himself over Stiles, footsteps thudding heavily as he makes for the window. As glass shatters, Stiles heaves himself up, picks up Scott’s chair and uses it to cover himself while he makes for Lydia. 

He unties her quickly, catching her when she slumps forward. He closes his eyes and replays the memory of Deaton’s fingers, repeating the symbols over Lydia’s heart. When she begins to move, he draws healing runes until the holes in her arms close over. Someone shoots at him and it barely misses. He curses and tucks Lydia into a space that must have been some sort of hall closet. She whimpers and he adjusts her position before turning, ready to do whatever he needs to do. 

One of the twins is coming at him. He ducks quickly to avoid getting clawed. The ground shakes violently and he loses his balance, listing sideways before regaining his footing. He twists to avoid another hit and reaches his hands out for whatever he can grab. When his fingertips make contact, he lights them up. The twin hits the ground and Stiles leaps forward so he can plant his hands on him entirely, increasing the voltage. He cringes when Lydia screams, his eyes snapping to her. Her head is thrown back, face red while she shrieks like she is being fucking murdered or something. The twin uses the distraction to his advantage, sinking his claws into Stiles’ legs. 

Stiles hisses in surprise and curls his palms around the man’s shoulders, setting them aflame. The twin scrambles at him, tries to find anything to hold onto. His claws cut into Stiles, slicing him shallowly, but Stiles doesn’t stop. He screams in pain and Stiles nearly gags at the smell. He is struck with the thought that this is not the only person to burn in this house. He shakes his head and grips the man harder, holds him in place while his entire body goes ablaze. 

When Stiles knows there is no way the twin will evade death, he hoists himself up and off of him, staying close to the ground. He turns and Deaton is with the woman who hit Stiles in the warehouse. Her eyes are bugging out of her head while she tries and fails to land hit after hit. Her skin looks red and Stiles knows she is bubbling inside, her water molecules transforming into boiling lava. 

Erica steps in, wide-eyed and frantic. Stiles rounds on her. “You are so goddamn lucky,” he nearly screams at her. “You have an out. You gave us up for yourself, for your own fucking relief. So, you have five seconds to get the fuck out of my sight and on the nearest plane to the farthest place, or I am going to make your entire sacrifice fucking pointless.” 

She swallows and he steps closer. “Now! You’d better fucking leave right now!”

She turns and runs for the door. When he can no longer see her, he turns again and Morrell is with the other twin, cooing at him. “Your mom is alive, she is here. Look, can’t you see her?” The man looks lost, starry-eyed and hopeful, gazing at someone no one can see but him. Stiles swallows hard and looks around, searching for the last pack member. 

Lydia screams and the woman with Deaton hits the ground, vapor trailing lightly from her ears and slack mouth. 

Stiles is tackled from behind. He makes contact with the floor, hard, and grits his teeth through the pain. Claws rake down his back and he screams. He twists, ignoring how it burns, and kicks his legs out as hard as he can. They make contact with the bald man’s hip and upper thigh, swaying him off balance. Stiles uses the opportunity to kick again, aiming both feet for his knee. The man goes sideways and Stiles forces himself forward, eyes stinging at the way it pulls at the wounds on his back. He grips and the man’s shirt and he retaliates, reaching for Stiles’ arms and catching his wrists. Stiles lets himself fire up, buzzing hot with electricity. The man yelps and Stiles presses forward, forces him to feel it. 

Stiles falls back in surprise at the sudden _noise_. The wall to his right splinters and he is so achingly relieved to see Derek fucking Hale that he thinks he is going to pass out from the rush in his head, from the overwhelming surprise and almost-gratitude clogging his mind like a fucking virus. 

Lydia screams and the remaining twin falls dead under Morrell’s hands.

The man below him yanks Stiles forward by his shirt, head-butting him. Stiles squeezes his eyes shut at the blistering pain spreading across his skull and the man sinks his claws into Stiles’ stomach. He screams, the sound dragging up his throat, grating on its way out. 

He squints his eyes open and Derek is shifting. Where he once stood as a man is now where a wolf is snarling. He leaps forward, mouth dribbling. He makes it to them in two strides, and the man screams when Derek bites into the juncture of his neck and shoulder. Lydia screams in unison and Stiles rolls over onto his back, tracing runes until nothing burns anymore. 

He pushes himself up and suddenly he falls right back down. He is no longer in the Hale house, he is in his kitchen, surrounded by color and the smell of home. 

He is standing on his father’s feet while he dances, his mother singing along to where _The Wind Cries Mary_ is crackling through their radio. She is sitting on the island, her feet swinging back and forth like a child. His dad laughs and his mom laughs and they’re all laughing. She looks at him, eyes adoring, and says softly, fondly, “You killed me.”

Stiles’ blood runs cold. “What?”

“You killed me,” his mother repeats. Suddenly, she is morphing. Her veins ink black and her skin turns gray. Her hair becomes wiry and slimy, her clothes grimy and tattered. She reaches out to him and she looks thin, nothing but skin and bone. The embodiment of the word _decay_. 

Stiles tries to back away but he can’t. “You killed me,” she insists again, nearly yelling it, words garbled, clogged. 

Stiles shakes his head and she keeps coming at him and he keeps trying to back away but he can’t and he hears screaming and—

He is at the Hale house. Isaac is standing next to him holding a handgun, smoke rippling from the suppressor. He looks at Stiles and motions to the ground with his head, says, “What a bitch.”

Stiles looks to where Jennifer is crumpled on the floor, bullet hole creating a fissure in her skull. He smirks and gives Isaac a grateful nod, causing him to grin. 

Boyd slinks up to Deucalion. Reaches to unholster the gun at his side. Stiles stops him. “I want to take him back to The Den,” he says. The other man nods and crouches down, hefting Deucalion up and over his shoulder. 

It feels odd. Seeing everyone lying dead around them. The cracked wood, shattered glass, the bloodstains. They are all breathing hard, looking at each other. Derek shifts back and Stiles averts his gaze. He hears him rustling around. In the meantime, Stiles stares at the chair he was bound to. He feels exhausted, more drained than he has ever felt in his entire life. When he looks back at Derek, he is wearing the second twin’s bloodstained clothes. 

Derek just looks at him. Drags his eyes over him, gaze idling where there are bright splotches of blood on his shirt. He looks at Stiles in this way, this oddly searching way that makes him feel like he is under a spotlight, like Derek fucking knows him or something. Then, something else enters his expression. Something like hope. That’s so fucking dangerous, and Derek should know better. 

“Did you…” he trails off, swallows. “Did you see—”

  
  


x

  
  


Deaton interrupts him. “Peter isn’t here.”

Derek scowls and cuts his gaze to the man. “What are _you_ fucking doing here?”

Deaton smiles lightly, undaunted. “They took Scott. Also, my sister knows better than to kill Stiles Stilinski.”

He thinks about it. _Peter isn’t here._ Derek feels exposed, shaky and a little disoriented. Like he isn’t sure which way is up, like he could close his eyes and have no idea if his feet were on the ground or if he was suspended mid air, spinning like Stiles on his fucking aerial ring. 

He doesn’t know why it hurts so bad to hear that Peter isn’t here. “How do you know?” he challenges. 

Deaton does not rise to the bait. “He was never here. I don’t know where he is, but Peter Hale was not in this house tonight. They lied to you.”

“Then how the fuck did they have his phone?” 

Deaton has the audacity to fucking shrug. Derek remembers exactly why he hated the man. “I said he was never in this house, I didn’t say that they never _saw_ him. He simply was not here.”

Derek grits his teeth. He looks back at Stiles. The younger man looks like hell. Probably the worst Derek has ever seen him look. It makes him angry, makes a primal rage bubble up in his chest.

Stiles looks at Deaton. “You know Scott will have to be with us now, right?”

Deaton chuckles. “Just because he is a wolf doesn’t mean he has to join you.”

“Wolves need pack,” Stiles insists. “He will wither away on his own.”

“I didn’t say he couldn’t be pack,” Deaton corrects lightly. “But he doesn’t need to be caught up in—”

Stiles takes a menacing step closer, pointing a finger at his chest. “You think I don’t fucking know that?” he hisses, moving his finger back and forth at himself to enunciate the words. “You think I fucking _wanted_ him here? They brought him here to hurt me. They fucked up his entire life just so I would feel it. And I did.” 

Deaton sighs out of his nose. “Stiles, they brought Scott here for you as much as they did for me. Not everything is always your fault. I thought we talked about that.”

Derek watches Stiles swallow, his throat bob. 

“Can we fucking go home already?” Isaac asks, huffing. He crouches down, picking Lydia up where she is passed out, nose leaking blood. 

Derek wants to shift and snarl in his face at the disrespect, but the small smile that tugs at Stiles’ lips stops him. 

Boyd comes back from outside, where he was depositing Deucalion in the back of their vehicle. 

He looks around, his face rigid with careful hope. “Where is Erica?” he asks, cautious. Derek sucks in a breath through his teeth, he fucking forgot about Erica. Stiles’ scent goes sour. And _sad_. 

“She isn’t here,” he says.

A growl builds low in Boyd’s chest and Stiles locks eyes with him. “She sold us out, Boyd. She was the mole.”

Derek feels his face slacken with shock. He knows the others’ are doing the same. Stiles shrugs and laughs a humorless laugh. “She said this wasn’t her forever. There is something more out there.”

No one says anything and they all make their way to the door, Deaton and Morrell lagging behind. When they step outside, Derek freezes. This is about to go to shit. He fucking forgot about the sheriff. 

He is leaning on his cruiser, straightens up when he sees they’ve come out. Derek feels Stiles go rigid beside him. “What the _fuck_ is he doing here?” Stiles demands at the same time Isaac says, “So the Big Bad Sheriff was nowhere to be seen for the actual fighting. Interesting.” 

Stilinski ignores Isaac, who is shifting to adjust Lydia’s weight. He is looking at his son. “Stiles—”

  
  


x

  
  


Stiles feels like he can’t fucking breathe. He shakes his head vehemently. “No. I don’t want to hear a fucking word from you. I have nothing to say to you.”

The man’s face goes soft with hurt, he always was an open book. “Stiles, just—”

“Do you fucking understand me?” Stiles cuts him off, a little shrilly, a little hysterically. “I have _nothing_ to say to you.” 

With that, he stalks forward to the Range Rover, throws open the door and levers himself in before slamming it shut.

  
  


x

  
  


The sheriff looks to Derek helplessly. He just shrugs. “If you want forgiveness, you’ll have to work for it. You’re a fucking idiot if you didn’t know that.” 

“He’s a fucking idiot regardless,” Isaac huffs from behind Derek. 

Stilinski just stands there, staring at the passenger side of the Range Rover while they make their way to it. 

“You have a good night, sheriff,” Derek calls from where he is about to open the driver’s side door. “Tell Mahealani I said _thank you_.”

With that, he gets into the car. 

The ride to The Den feels like it happens in slow motion, or in reverse, or in some alternate way that makes Derek feel like he is slipping between dimensions. Tonight has been so heavy. He is so unearthly relieved that Stiles is alive that the feeling is almost tangible, Derek can feel it curling around his fingers. Stiles didn’t die and Derek is fucking happy about it. He almost wants to reach a hand over to the passenger’s side, rest it on Stiles’ shoulder or neck or thigh, just set it there and know that he is breathing, that they made it. 

Seeing the house didn’t hurt in the severity that Derek predicted it would. But, he is also feeling so much, too much, to be able to process that experience on its own. He is going to need time, when he is by himself, when he is no longer in a dead man’s clothes, to reflect on it, to process it. But, for now, he is fine. And Stiles is alive. He will worry about the rest later. 

When they pull up to The Den, Isaac is the first one out, carefully pulling Lydia from the backseat. Boyd is retrieving Deucalion. “Tie him up in one of the interrogation rooms,” Stiles instructs. “I don’t care what you do when he wakes up. I want him to sit there until I’m ready to deal with him.” 

Boyd nods his understanding and makes his way into the house. Derek looks across the hood at Stiles, who looks right back at him. He turns away from Derek, walking toward the front door. Derek follows, just like he always does. He feels scratchy on the inside, like something within him wants to claw its way out. He is following Stiles and all he can think about is how be didn’t fucking die. How he doesn’t have to bury Stiles Stilinski. It claws harder. Aching to be free. He follows Stiles, feeling laid bare and high strung, ready to snap at the lightest touch.

  
  


x

  
  


Stiles mindlessly follows the path to his room. He can hear Derek behind him, following him. Stiles feels raw, shaky and a little strung out. He doesn’t feel real. This entire night, The Pack, everything - nothing feels like it ever happened. He feels like he is floating, suspended in space, not alive but not dead. Just existing. 

When they reach his room, he wrings his hands, still facing away from Derek. He looks at all of his things, all in the same place as when he left them. He just stares at his things that don’t even feel like his things, in his room that doesn’t feel like his room, in his life that doesn’t feel like his life. 

He thinks about everything that happened tonight. Takes a deep, heaving breath and turns around with his eyes closed. He opens them and looks at Derek, who is studying him. Desperate and oddly severe. Stiles isn’t hurt, he used a few runes in the car. Everything is healed except for the bone-deep pain of knowing that he can never have anything. That for as long as he lives he will have to fight tooth and nail to keep what he values. He is tired of fighting. Some shit happened tonight that Peter probably would have killed him for. Or at least threatened to. Derek is their Alpha now, and Stiles is not so stupid as to think that he will allow him as much generosity. He doesn't even know if he is still pack, now that Derek is calling the shots.

Derek looks upset and Stiles steels himself for the conversation that he is not ready to have. Will never be ready to have. This is all he’s got. If he loses this too, he will wither away into nothing. 

He clears his throat and averts his gaze, feeling as close to ashamed as he has ever felt in this room. He runs a hand through his hair, scrubs it over his face. “I just want to say, before you say anything, that I understand if I am not welcome her—”

Derek makes a low, almost pained sound in the deep of his throat and closes the gap between them. Grabs Stiles’ face and pushes their mouths together, pinning him to the wall with his hips. Stiles has to hold his hands to the side while his palms crackle with fire in retaliation to what he had anticipated as an attack. They’ve reached the precipice, peaked and toppled over it into the abyss. The amalgamation of years of pent up _something_. The anger, the loyalty, the fact that their hurt mimics each other’s. Derek is searing hot in a way that is innately familiar, in a way that sends a blistering shiver down Stiles’ spine.

He licks into Stiles’ mouth, slow and wet and unlike anything Stiles has ever had before. It’s the same, but the connotation is different. He isn’t being roughed up, pinned down. He’s free to move, held reverently in Derek’s hands, he can feel the other man’s eyelashes leaving feather-light touches on his cheeks. It’s a dizzying power trip, to be gripped reverently by palms that kill, hands that have curled into fists and splintered bone, blunt teeth that can easily elongate into fangs nipping lightly at his lips. He is being built up by things that are so often used to break down, destroy, and he feels like he is boiling from the inside. 

He grips helplessly at Derek’s biceps, sliding his palms up the man’s arms to his shoulders, embedding his fingertips into the skin on either side of Derek’s nape. It has to hurt, has to feel uncomfortable, but Derek just presses harder, deeper. Stiles slides his fingers into Derek’s hair and pulls, just searching for something to hold onto. 

Derek detaches, moving down to Stiles’ throat. He rakes his teeth over where his adam’s apple is dipping on every swallow, licks over Stiles’ hammering pulse point, tasting his heartbeat. It’s scalding hot, and when Derek’s cool breath billows over the trail his mouth left, it nearly burns. Stiles’ head falls back, thudding on the wall. He keens when Derek bites, feels embarrassed that he has been reduced to noises, can’t even form words for this. Derek just presses his teeth in further, encouraging him, so Stiles licks his lips and groans. Because he wants to, because he can. 

He comes back up and brings his lips to Stiles’, not kissing, just touching. Each of them heaving hot breaths into each other’s open mouths. Derek has one hand at the base of his skull, the other fisted tightly in Stiles’ shirt, just below his ribs. 

Stiles will never admit it, but he feels out of his element. He doesn’t know how to treat someone with care, how to caress instead of collapse, how to hold someone and not seek to destroy them. He isn’t sure how Derek is doing it - as many years as he has spent despising Stiles. He would have never guessed that Derek could regard him like this. He feels white hot and hazy, like he can’t focus. 

Derek pulls back but keeps his hands resting on Stiles. He just looks at him, pale eyes taking in every inch of his face. Stiles suddenly feels silly, uncomfortably vulnerable. His neck heats up at the feeling. 

Stiles clears his throat. He isn’t ready to ruin whatever this is. Isn’t ready to lose it, too. But, he has to say it. “Whoever you think I am. I’m not.”

It feels surreal, like an out of body experience, watching Derek’s face soften. Seeing his expression so open when usually it is always cold, always so angry. 

“I know exactly who you are,” Derek replies simply. He leans in and kisses Stiles on the mouth, small and close-lipped. Heated and deliberate. 

Derek brings his hand up to curl against the side of Stiles’ neck, smoothing soft arcs on the skin with his thumb. Stiles feels gooseflesh pebble up, erupting under Derek’s touch. “But, you have to know who I am.” 

Stiles feels his expression coat with confusion. He searches Derek’s face for the meaning. 

Derek stares into him, serious. His thumb is still brushing back and forth. “I have too much self respect to be your consolation prize. I won’t settle for second best to Jackson Whittemore.” 

Stiles sucks in a sharp breath through his teeth, feels it catch in his throat. What he had with Jackson was - safe. It was comfortable. Easy. Jackson was just _here_. But, Jackson had no idea what this was like. Not really. He grew up in suburbia. Came from money - looked like it, talked like it, acted like it. It was nice. But, he would have never understood who Stiles was. What this life meant to him. Jackson wanted to run, believed Stiles would go with him. That is how Stiles knows that Jackson didn’t really know him - he knew the ideal of Stiles that he had constructed in his head. The vision of Stiles he developed from nights spent in each other’s bedrooms, from inside jokes and easy conversations. 

Derek has always known. They initiated each other, they watched each other torture and kill. They knew the darkest parts of one another, knew the other’s hurt well enough to hit them where it counts, to wound with the last word. Derek knows what it is like to lose everything, to have to claw yourself out of the dark over and over and over again. He has seen Stiles at rock bottom, and Stiles has seen Derek weathered down by the weight of living with this. Like this. 

Stiles is fire, and Derek is no stranger to being burned. 

He knows that Derek is not Jackson. For the first time, he thinks that maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s for the best. 

He searches deep into Derek’s eyes, traces the curve of his brow and the slope of his nose. They are still so close, breathing in each other’s air. “I don’t know if I can love you,” he admits quietly, honestly.

Derek’s expression does not change. If anything, it evens out, but he does not close up like Stiles thought he would. Does not turn rigid with anger. Instead he just says, “You don’t have to love me. You can’t change someone by loving them.” 

Stiles closes the distance, this time. Now that he has had it, he doesn’t know how he could have missed this. How he allowed such a deep-seated, rippling hatred to fester into a gaping wound, one that bled at the mere sight of Derek. When he arrived at The Den, he was rubbed raw, flayed open and lilting with a white-hot rage that had no direction to go but outward. Hating Derek was so easy - sitting at the same novice level as the hatred for his father, the hatred for Peter, the spotlight of loathing that he tried so desperately to aim away from himself. He could have missed how soft Derek’s lips are, how he groans deep and long in the base of his throat, how his fingertips twist helplessly in the skin coating Stiles’ waist, hips, throat. Stiles’ nerves are flaming, firing where Derek trails blistering heat across his skin; axons acting as a line of gasoline. His central nervous system feels like it has been replaced with tripwires and gunpowder, sizzling in warning to an upcoming explosion.

Derek bites at the hollow between his neck and collarbone, nips his way up to the hinge of Stiles’ jaw, his lips right by his ear. When he speaks, Stiles can envision the curl of his smirk. “I know you think no one gives a shit about you,” he breathes, red hot and shivery into the skin below Stiles’ earlobe, smearing the words into his flesh. “But, I am glad you didn’t die tonight, Stiles.”

He pulls away, then, flashing all his teeth, eyes glinting something dangerous. He rubs his wrist across Stiles’ shoulders, scenting him. It is goodbye, but it is also hello, a welcome to whatever the hell it is he just started. Stiles is helpless, rooted to the floor as he watches him leave. 

  
  


x

Derek is shaking. 

His lips burn and his mind feels hazy. He took something, after so so so long of fucking giving, of being stolen from, he got to have something for himself. He kissed Stiles Stilinski like he has wanted to do for so fucking long. 

Something in him clicked into place. Some glaring chasm - one that stayed so dreadfully empty that Derek felt like he _was_ the chasm, like he was this pit of darkness that did nothing but swallow up everything around him like some fucking black hole - closed up. 

He kissed Stiles Stilinski and Stiles Stilinski fucking kissed him right back. He kissed him back, even when Derek made it clear that he would not haunt the spaces carved by Jackson. Made it clear that he would not be okay with easing Stiles’ aches until he got over it. He made it clear and Stiles fucking understood him. Stiles understood him and still fucking kissed him on the mouth like he needed it. Like he would die without it. 

He’d expected him to taste like - Derek doesn’t even know. Cough drops, cinnamon, rainwater. He just tasted like - he tasted how he smells. Like magic. Citrus-sweet and lemon-sour. When Derek licks his lips it is still there, remnants of electricity. 

He sits on his bed, dressed down and ready to fucking pass out. He can’t sleep. Because all he can think about is Stiles, Stiles and his lips and how he is alive. Stiles and his home and how Peter is fucking gone and his family is dead. Citrus and magic and mountain ash and the people he loves screaming for help. The lemon on his tongue tastes like electricity, like the crackling end of a cattle prod, yellow-gold like her hair and stinging-hot like her hands. 

He squeezes his eyes shut but all he can see is Stiles’ flushed face - glossy eyes and blotchy cheeks. All he can see is Cora’s smile and his mom’s side profile from the kitchen and Laura’s car. All he can hear is Peter’s laugh and his dad’s voice and the way Stiles panted heat into his mouth. 

He tugs at his hair and all he can feel is grief. All he can do is mourn everything he lost while his heart pounds hopeful for what he might have just welcomed. 

  
  


x

  
  


Stiles lies in his bed, stares at the ceiling while his lips feel raw and his mind feels like it is bubbling in acid. He stares at the ceiling and he sees his mom - how she transformed into a monster, how she screamed that he killed her. How his dad looked right at him, dead-eyed, before claiming the same thing, before chucking the bottle at Stiles.

All he can hear is Scott screaming bloody murder, begging for it to stop. All he can see is his dad’s face. The fucking audacity of him to show up. To blindside Stiles after - after all of that, after everything, after Stiles just had to relive the worst memories of him. He thinks about how he could have died tonight, how it could have been over. How Peter is gone and Deaton knows more than he lets on and Scott is out there somewhere, probably struggling all on his own. 

He closes his eyes, tired of looking at the ceiling, tired of _seeing_. But, it doesn’t help. It’s more vivid against the backdrop of his eyelids. How Derek looked at him, how he kissed him slow and deep like he fucking mattered. How Lydia was slumped over, how Deucalion bit her, how she screamed over and over and over. 

He is healed, but he can still feel every claw mark. The way Jennifer’s fingers curled around his jaw. The way Derek gripped at him like a goddamn lifeline. 

He startles when a knock sounds on his door. 

When he swings it open, Boyd is standing there. 

“Deucalion’s awake.”

Stiles scowls. “Good. Let him fucking sit there.”

When Boyd nods, Stiles shuts his door and goes back to his bed. He plays the memories over and over until the sun filters in through the windows. Plays them over and over until he almost can’t feel it. 

Peter’s words echo in his head. _Things only hurt you if you let them._

He hopes Peter is fucking rotting in hell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok so there is a lot of torture in this chapter. i personally do not feel like i go into any sort of strenuous detail, but it is still pretty bad. most of it is emotional torture (on stiles' end) but it is kind of unpleasant in how it applies to scott and his reaction to the bite. same for lydia even though she does not feel it.
> 
> in the Big fight scene there is a lot of violence and killing - stiles burns and electrocutes ppl, while others do some other fucked up things. it's a lot lmao. 
> 
> aside from that, near the end, derek is doing a lot of thinking and he remembers some traumatic things in a sort of passive way that is not graphic but still pretty sad and maybe upsetting. same for stiles. 
> 
> anyway i hope you guys enjoyed. this was so fucking hard to write lmao


	9. act vi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes it has been like 2 weeks ... and this is only 9k ... but life ran me over and then reversed lmao. i upped the end count from 10 to 12 because i have been struggling with this story and i genuinely do not know how long it is gonna take to be finished. the next chapter is an interlude, though, so there’s that. 
> 
> this chapter was really difficult for me to write. like i mega struggled and it really discouraged me and affected my overall productivity. so my apologies for taking so long. i’m not happy with this but yolo. 
> 
> shouts out to harry styles’ song _fine line_ for making me replay it over and over just to hear when he says _you’ve got my devotion, but man i can hate you sometimes_
> 
> not beta read, nor really even alpha read. i did not read this shit so idk why i expect you to. anywho enjoy (: additional warnings and things in the end notes

**Act VI - Mirage**

“Do not presume too much upon my love; I may do that I shall be sorry for.”

  
  


Derek really should have fucking known better. 

When he wakes up - mouth still buzzing with the electric tang of citrus - he just knows, deep down in the fucking marrow of his bones, that he should have known better than to give in to Stiles Stilinski. 

He blinks up at the ceiling, clearing the film from his eyes, and feels inexplicably weighted down. Like he did something irreversible that he is going to have to pay the price for. He always ends up having to pay for giving himself the things he so desperately wants. 

He slips on a tank top, pants loose on his hips, and steps with sock-soft feet to his bathroom. He makes sure to open the medicine cabinet so he doesn’t have to see his reflection while brushing his teeth. He made a mistake. He knows he did. He let the adrenaline and crippling relief rule his system, he let himself make a decision that needed more thought than a quick concession clouded over with the foggy idea of finally having something to relieve the pain. Stiles fucking despises him, everyone knows it. Derek isn’t too sure he likes Stiles either. He knows for fucking certain that Stiles is not over Jackson, and Derek honestly doesn’t expect him to be. That shit is traumatic, you don’t just move on from that. Derek can’t think about his family without feeling as though someone is carving out his chest and it has been twelve fucking years. Stiles hasn’t even had a month. Derek cannot fairly demand from Stiles the things he has not been given time to offer. He knows it is hypocritical. He does, okay.

You can’t change things by wishing they were different. You can’t change someone by loving them.

But, when he finishes brushing his teeth, he spits the excess toothpaste into the basin and looks idly at the reflection of the overhead light within it, remembering how Stiles stared at him with wide eyes, kissed him with scorching lips, the fucking _noises_ he made. Derek slams the medicine cabinet shut and shuts the faucet off, blanketing the bathroom in silence. He wishes he could demand those things - wishes he could fit Stiles’ body into all of his empty spaces until he is whole. Wishes he could slot his fingers into the divots of Stiles’ ribs, rub a hot hand down the knobs of his spine, cant his hips and bury the tips of his fingers into soft flesh, lick Stiles’ skin until all their senses know one another. But this is real fucking life. Derek kissed Stiles while they were both reeling and by doing so he fucked everything. He upset the balance. Derek is a black hole, all he does is _want_. He can’t be sated with this, and it is just going to piss Stiles off. Last night, he should have just gone to his own goddamn room. 

When he walks out into the hall, he can see that Stiles’ door is open. He walks to it cautiously, internally debating if he should face Stiles after everything. He steps to the threshold, surprised to see Stiles sitting on the edge of his bed, just staring ahead out the window. 

When Derek steps inside, Stiles just says, “Can I help you?”

He clears his throat. “You okay?”

Stiles scoffs, dragging his eyes away from the trees to cast an incredulous glance at Derek. “Do you care?”

Derek frowns, tries not to bristle or get defensive. He rolls his shoulders back. “If I didn’t care I wouldn’t have asked. You had a rough night.”

The spark huffs and looks away again. “I knew I shouldn’t have fucking kissed you. I wouldn’t have if I had known you would be like this.”

Derek feels his gums itch. “Be like what? I can’t have feelings? Fuck you, Stiles.”

He just laughs, still staring dead ahead. “Yeah. That’s more like it.” 

Derek takes a deep breath in through his nose. Stiles doesn’t know how to care about people, no one taught him how. He takes a step back, shaking his head. “I am not going to let you fuck with my head. You can act like you don’t give a shit, but I can still taste how you moaned into my mouth. So, maybe sit until you feel better and come get me when you’re ready to talk to Deucalion.”

He smirks at the spike in Stiles’ heart rate while he leaves the room. He never has the upper hand, he could get used to this. He decides to grab his knuckles from his nightstand drawer. He wants to pay a visit to Deucalion before Stiles does. He wants to ask his own questions, inflict his own pain. The spaces in The Den that were once filled by Peter are so empty, vacant in a way that almost echoes, in a way that almost makes Derek wish he could be like Stiles. Makes him wish he knew how to stop feeling it. 

Deucalion laughs when Derek opens the door. 

“Am I in trouble or something?” he questions mockingly, shrugging his shoulders as much as he can within the binds. There are jumper cables attached to the shackles on his legs, Derek can hear the buzz of electricity. He closes his eyes, smothering the memories of how that same sound flooded his ears in a dark basement. How badly it stung. How eventually it hurt so badly to scream that he just remained silent. 

“Or something,” Derek says flatly, stalking forward until he is standing across from the other man. 

Deucalion tilts his head back and smiles, a beaming and infuriating thing that makes Derek want to dig his claws into something. 

“Where is Peter?” he grits out. 

Deucalion sighs softly through his nose. “You want to know something interesting about sparks, Derek? Beneath all of the magic, they are just over-glorified humans.”

Derek’s mouth twists into a frown. 

“Stiles, poor little Stiles, all shackled up with iron. Big Bad Spark turned scared, hurting little human. Isn’t that so bizarre?”

Derek kicks the leg of the chair to shut him the fuck up. “Where is Peter?”

“It is funny to see someone as spitfire and resourceful as him be reduced to nothing. All you have to do is play a couple memories of mommy and daddy and - _boom_ \- he’s just as weak as the rest of them.”

“I said,” Derek growls, fingers twitching, “where the fuck is Peter?”

“You know, I wish I had someone like you, Derek. Someone so fiercely loyal to me even though I have done nothing to deserve it. Peter is a lucky man. Or - pardon me - slip of the tongue. Peter _was_ a lucky man.”

When his fist connects with Deucalion’s face, it does not feel as vindicating as he’d hoped it would. His hand just aches until it heals and Deucalion bleeds until his wound stitches itself shut. Then they are back at square one. The way the other man laughs and rolls his jaw around a smirk makes Derek’s blood feel like it has been set aflame, cells boiling over and god it fucking _burns_. 

“God, I would love to have Stiles, even. The things he has been through, could you imagine having someone like that on your side? Someone who has nothing at all. The way his scent went dark when I—”

Derek hits him again. And again. And again. Until his hands are sticky, stained red while his vision mimics the colors. 

Deucalion spits blood and tilts his head to the side like he is bored. Like nothing hurts. God fucking damn it why is hurt all Derek knows how to feel. 

“Truthfully, Derek. I don’t know where Peter is. But, I hope and pray with every fiber of my being that he is a rotting corpse fertilizing the ground I walk on.”

Derek slams his fists forward until his forearms ache. Until his chest is heaving and his forehead beads with a thin sweat-sheen. Until the thought of what Stiles might do later satisfies him enough to stop. 

“Luckily for you,” Derek pants, rubbing his palms clean against his shirt, “you may get to rot right alongside him.”

The way the man’s scent sours is enough for Derek to leave the room without feeling like he just lost something. 

  
  


x

  
  


Derek knows that the first time Stiles kills someone for Peter is not the first time the kid has killed someone. 

He doesn’t hesitate, his breath is steady and calm. The kill shot is sure, practiced, precise. He doesn’t flinch, his heart rate doesn’t change. He has none of the shaking jitters that wracked Derek the first time he drained someone of their life. He has done this before. 

He thinks about it for a long time after the fact. Who Stiles has killed. He is only seventeen. Derek laughs at himself, a little self-deprecating, almost hysterical. When he was sixteen he killed four people while they slept. He has no room to talk. 

Derek knows of Stiles. He doesn’t know him. He hasn’t met him. 

If there is anything he learned from training, it’s that you don’t talk about Stiles’ family. Nothing struck a nerve like the mention of his mother, the reminder of his father, just a drive away yet nowhere to be found. So much anger bubbling just below the surface, so much heartache in that scowl. 

Derek knows what grief looks like on himself. The heavy steps, the dark circles, the unrelenting persistence that corners him in the night - embedded within the sight of a dog, the sound of Laura’s favorite song, the taste of strawberries. 

Derek realizes, then, that the first person Stiles had to kill was himself. 

He knows what that is like. Derek is still trapped beneath the floorboards, caked in ash.

  
  


x

  
  


Derek is scrubbing the blood from the creases in his knuckles when the shower door slides open. 

He blinks at Stiles, keeps his eyes straight ahead while the other man steps into the empty space, gooseflesh pebbling his neck and shoulders as he gets misted from the spray. Stiles looks him directly in the face, eyes bright and challenging, as if he wishes Derek would say something to stop him. Derek can’t say anything, the syllables of every word he knows clogging up his throat, refusing to come out, too difficult to assemble into anything worth saying. So, he remains silent and keeps his gaze averted. Stiles is bare naked, nothing but pale skin dotted in moles, the Hale Crest dark between his collarbones. He has no idea what the spark is doing. He swallows hard and looks for shapes in the shower’s tile like he is cloud watching. Just the same as he and Laura did when they were children. The crack in the second tile from the left kind of looks like a face. Or an eye. Or maybe a—

Stiles clears his throat and Derek jerks his eyes back to his face. The younger man arches an eyebrow, gestures to the water and says, casually, like they do this every single day, “Can I get a turn?”

Derek squeezes his eyes shut and dunks his head under the spray until his hair is drenched, dripping down his shoulders and into his eyelashes. He brings a free hand up so he can swipe the water from his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. 

Stiles slips past him, rubbing a deliberate shoulder across Derek’s chest as they change positions. _Scenting him_. Derek sucks his teeth at Stiles’ coy look and reaches around him to retrieve his shampoo from the rack on the showerhead. Stiles purposefully rakes his eyes over Derek’s body, smirking when Derek simply raises his eyebrows in return. Stiles stays quiet and Derek turns away to face the wall, scrubs his hair while the other man stands beneath the stream. They wordlessly switch back once Derek turns around. He looks over at Stiles when he opens his eyes after rinsing; he is squeezing Derek’s body wash into his cupped palm, lathering his chest and shoulders after he replaces it on the shelf. He tracks the spark’s movements almost involuntarily before averting his eyes. This crack looks like a dog, or perhaps a gun. 

The only sound is their breathing and the mechanical hiss of the showerhead, the thrum of water coursing through the pipes in the wall behind them. Stiles hasn’t said anything else and Derek has never been one for filling silences. So Derek just stares at him. He can’t stop. Stiles’ eyelashes are clumped together by beads of water, spiked up and so so dark, framing his eyes that always shine different colors like sun-soaked tiger’s eye. The skin around them is tinted purple and gray, his eyes sinking into the socket. He thinks about what Decualion said - tries not to imagine the memories of _mommy and daddy_. Stiles looks so tired, he looks how Derek has always known him. He stares right back at Derek, unflinching, expression shifting with multitudes of things that neither of them will ever fucking say. Stiles is just there, and Derek knows that he is, and they each know what one another cannot outwardly express. He knows. And Derek knows, too. He feels like the look on Stiles’ face. Derek blinks and Stiles bends all the way down as he rubs the soap over his legs.

Derek tries not to think about it, drops his head back so he is watching the vapor swirl above them. All he can see when he blinks is the way Stiles looked at him - red-lipped with blown pupils - like when lightning strikes and you can still see the flash when you close your eyes. Stiles squeezes past him and rinses his body, still staring at Derek while Derek keeps his eyes trained anywhere else. 

He has a weird smile on his face while he cracks open the shower door, outstretched arm returning with a towel. His entire demeanor is different, has shifted into something decidedly more comfortable. Derek feels like he just passed some sort of test. Stiles steps out and scrubs himself dry before slinging the towel low on his hips. 

He gives Derek a sharp twist of his lips through the gap that is leaking cold air into the pleasant heat. “I guess you could say I feel better now,” is all he says. It is the closest he will ever come to an apology. They both recognize it. Derek bites the inside of his cheek so hard he is sure it will bleed. He squeezes shampoo into his hand just for something to do, massages it into his hair while he listens to Stiles mess around at the sink, rinses it out after he hears the bathroom door click shut. 

While he listens intently to Stiles’ steps retreating down the hall, Derek realizes he just washed his hair twice. He trains his eyes on the wall, tracing the cracks until the water turns cold. 

  
  


x

  
  


Derek can count on one hand the amount of times he has heard his mother cry. 

This is number five.

Despite the estrangement, dysfunction, betrayal, and overall clashing of values - Talia really does love Peter. More than he deserves. She tries to include him, tries to get him out. People like Peter don’t want out. People like Peter feed off of the pain, need it to survive. 

“He is never going to be happy,” she sobs into his father’s shoulder. Derek is listening through the walls, supposed to have long since been asleep. 

His father shushes her. “He made his decision, Tal. Leave it be.”

She sniffles. “He is miserable. I know he is.”

“He’s alive. That’s the best we can hope for. You know that.”

“The things that keep him alive are what keep him alone, Michael.”

His father sighs. Derek hears his mother’s breath hitch wetly. “People like Peter are always alone. No matter how many others are with him. He is always going to be alone.”

Derek rolls over, buries his head beneath his pillow. He doesn’t know if he could ever be like that. Like Peter. He doesn’t know if he could ever be alone. 

  
  


x

  
  


He cleans up Erica’s room so that Boyd won’t have to. 

Derek mops up the blood and throws out the bedding. He wipes everything down with disinfectant wipes until nothing smells like her anymore. Until it doesn’t smell like Boyd’s lost love and the absence of Stiles’ best friend. When the room’s air is thick with the clinging smell of lavender and bleach, Derek decides he is done. When he closes the door, it looks more like a vacant hotel room than the empty space of a friend. That’s how it needs to be. 

Lydia has been in some sort of pseudo-coma for the past eighteen hours. Isaac has been checking on her every two or three to make sure she is still responsive. Boyd has been quiet, understandably so. Derek hasn’t said much either, not sure how to talk like Peter would. He doesn’t feel like their Alpha, and that is where the disconnect comes in. His instincts are clawing at his insides, demanding him to take, claim, lead. He fucking can’t. He doesn’t know how. Laura was supposed to be Alpha after his mother, so Derek never bothered to pick up on any of the skills. Peter always seemed like an immovable object, a constant, some immortal permanence. So, Derek never in a million years would have envisioned himself here, in Peter’s shoes, struggling to walk. 

He has gotten a few calls - foot soldiers wanting orders on where to deliver this, where to pick up that. People confirming loaded cargo containers, checking in shipment. Derek is out of his element. Peter was the puppetmaster. He is reluctant to admit that he needs help. But, to his misfortune, he knows exactly who can do this. Someone who knows what to say, how to act. Someone who has been operating these things longer than Derek has. 

Outside of the patio door, he finds himself hesitating. Everything is different, the space that Stiles has always occupied feels...stilted. Off balance. Derek isn’t sure how to be around him now. _Black hole_. He clears his throat and knocks on the threshold. He is the fucking Alpha. 

Stiles is smoking. Something Derek hasn’t seen him do in a while. Stiles hasn’t been doing much of anything lately. 

When he steps outside, Stiles barely acknowledges him. Just exhales smoke through his nose and squints against the setting sun’s glow. 

“Did your parents ever read to you?” 

Derek blinks. He is here for help, he doesn’t know what to do with this. He shrugs, even though Stiles is not looking at him. “My mom read us a lot of science books, but mostly our education was centered around pack. What it meant to do your part.”

Stiles takes another drag and dips his head over the back of the patio chair so that he is looking at Derek upside-down. He purses his lips, blows the smoke out. 

“My mom read a lot of poetry and fiction.” He sniffs. Hard. Rubs at his face. Derek watches tendrils of smoke thread through the cracks in his fingers. “It’s one of the only things I fucking despise about her now. How she made me relate everything back to her. Relate everything back to the shit she used to read for me.” He lifts his head back up, looking away again. “I just wish she would fucking go away sometimes. Then I feel bad, because it feels like I am constantly struggling to maintain my grip on the pieces of her that I do still have. But, goddamn, I just wish she would be quiet for one fucking second.” 

Derek can’t really relate. He cherishes every moment he ever had with his family. He wishes he could remember _more_ , that he didn’t have to replay the grainy memories that hold nearly faceless bodies rather than members of his pack. But, he didn’t watch any of them die. He heard them scream, felt the pack bonds snap into nothing. But, none of them deteriorated in front of him. They all died at once, simultaneously, too quickly to be properly mourned. Derek doesn’t know if that’s better or worse. 

So, he takes a deep breath and offers what he has. “I killed my family,” he speaks out into the void. “I was a kid who thought I knew what love looked like. They died because I wanted to be loved.” 

He watches Stiles lean forward, snub the cigarette in the ash tray before turning to Derek. “Everyone wants to be loved when they’re sixteen, Derek. Everyone.” Stiles searches his face and Derek feels hot, itchy, like his skin is stretched taut. “You did not kill your family. It is not a crime to want to be loved.” 

“It should have been enough for me,” Derek protests. “Their love should have been enough. I had everything, I—” he takes a deep breath and looks up at the sky so he doesn’t have to see how fucking deeply Stiles is focusing on him. “It was enough. I was a kid and I couldn’t see it. But it was enough.” 

Stiles smiles. Close-lipped and a little calculating. It is unlike any expression Derek has ever seen on him. He repeats, “You can’t change someone by loving them.” 

He turns away while Derek stares at him. He listens to the heavy drum of Stiles’ pulse hammering away beneath the skin of his throat. 

Stiles clicks his tongue, sighs and pushes himself to stand. Looks at Derek and says, “Not everything has to be like something. Your family’s love does not have to be like the love you wanted. Your hurt does not have to be like my hurt.” Stiles looks away. “You don’t have to be like Jackson. Sometimes, things can just be. I think we should just be.”

Derek feels his jaw fall slack. It’s as much of a declaration as he has ever gotten from Stiles. The spark exhales explosively and comes to stand in front of Derek. They just look at each other. Derek tries not to think about how Deucalion is just rooms away. How Peter is nowhere to be found. How he lost a packmate who he would have died for. How the skin between Stiles’ collarbones feels beneath Derek’s lips, how the Hale Crest tastes on his tongue. 

Stiles’ lips twist into a small smirk, eyes bottling the dim orange light cast by the receding sun. “In me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,” he recites, “my love feeds on your love.” 

Derek hears his own throat click when he swallows. He would have never thought desperation to be a quiet force, a nearly tangible presence. “What poem is that?” he asks, voice creaking, splintering with how his trachea feels like it has been closed over, kinked like a water hose, words tasting like warm water and damp grass. 

Stiles just smirks his fucking smirk and leans forward like Derek thought he would. Kisses him like Derek predicted he might. They are not good for each other. Both of them are jagged and sharp and when they cut it is with the intention of fatally wounding. With the intention of killing. Stiles seeks out casualties and Derek really can’t keep doing this. He can’t. But he wants to. Stiles feels like how the floorboards in his house used to creak under his feet, even when he tiptoed - infuriating and familiar and maybe just a little bit like where he belongs. Where he is.

The bones around his lungs snap, crack apart and leave him flayed open and exposed to whatever the fuck Stiles wants to do. This does not have to be like the love he wanted. This can just be. So, Derek fists his hands into Stiles’ shirt and pulls him forward, moulds him into the places Derek cannot reach. The places that have been so hollow that sometimes it feels like he has always been like that, incomplete - one part man, one part wolf, the remnants of himself made up by an echoing chasm that is never sated, always yearning for more. He takes a deep breath, silently accepts the idea of Stiles into the spaces he never wanted another person to touch. Because this doesn’t have to be like her. This doesn’t have to be like his family. This doesn’t have to be like late nights at The Nemeton, like hotel rooms with too-cold air conditioning and overbleached sheets. This doesn’t have to be like anything else. This is Derek just letting it be. 

He must be losing time. Because one second they are outside, Stiles’ silhouette nearly black against the vibrancy of the evening sky, his shape carved out between reds and pinks and purples, looking every bit like a stained glass window, a careful mosaic of an icon. When he blinks, they are in Stiles’ room, surrounded by books and plants and the smell of orange juice and grapefruit. 

Stiles’ lips feel like the shock of static and everywhere Derek touches hums with energy. The noises trapped in the base of his throat are slipping out in broken increments, sounding off like the hissing end of a sparkler. Stiles is electric and he cannot fucking get close enough. What is _wrong_ with him. 

Derek has always carried within him the embers of a fire that was snuffed out years ago. Smothered by a woman with red lips and a sugar-sweet scent. This feels like rekindling, like the lightning-quick scratch of a struck match, the liquid drizzle of kerosene lighting him up and swallowing him whole. A Hale tradition, it would seem. 

“What are we doing?” Derek pants into the space between them, he is reluctant to stop but he has to know. He can’t deal with the not knowing. “What are we doing, Stiles? Because I can’t realign myself when you decide you were just bored.” 

The way Stiles smiles - unbothered, self-assured, blinking slow and looking like nothing matters at all. Perhaps it doesn’t. Derek has always been one to over-amplify, project his inability to turn it off onto the people around him. He did it to Peter, made everything mean something in an effort to stay afloat, to grasp onto the crumbs of the word _family_. He makes himself stop thinking about it. Stiles scoffs, and it sounds mocking, intended to belittle Derek rather than portray an outright expression of frustration. “Oh, fuck you, Derek,” he retaliates, lips hot where they are brushing against his skin. Stiles dips his head down to mouth along Derek’s jaw until he is positioned beside his ear, panting damp and teasing into the scant space. “I’m lonely, okay? I’m fucking lonely. Is that what you wanted to hear?” 

Stiles backs him up until his calves hit the edge of the mattress, but honestly, Derek was leading them backward, silently beckoning Stiles into his space, inviting him to step into his bones and carve out the pieces he feels like taking, inviting him to please just do anything at all. Derek is wound up so so so tight, years and years of being coiled to the brink of snapping. Relief is right across from him, so Derek slips his fingers into Stiles’ belt loops and pulls until Stiles is bowed over him, red-cheeked and wild-eyed, not allowing an opportunity for this to fall from his grasp. He let’s Stiles talk, waits it out, only really half-listening. 

“I am so tired of having nothing. I am alone,” he continues, dropping forward and licking into Derek’s mouth, pressing deep enough that Derek can feel the ridges of his teeth through the cover of their lips. Stiles’ tongue points along the seam of his palate and it tickles, makes him arch up to get away or to curl closer or to meld their bodies together so this never stops. When he pulls away, Derek chases him, hates that he chases him, and Stiles knows it. Smirks like he fucking knows it. “Aren’t you tired of being alone?” he breathes, and it isn’t a question as much as a confirmation, as much as an _I know you are just like me_ , as much as an _I know you need this just like I do._

Stiles curls his fingers into the waistband of Derek’s pants and they’re fucking _molten_ \- he squeezes his eyes shut so hard that sparkles rain down behind his eyelids when the other man sinks down onto his haunches, pulling them the rest of the way off. Next is his tank top, Stiles’ fingertips leaving trails of heat across his abdomen, paths blistering so jarringly that they sting almost ice-cold. He aims his eyes at the ceiling, his knuckles tight and bloodless where his hands are fisted into the sheets. Stiles has rid him of everything but his briefs. Derek hears the tendons in his hands click over the rustle of the younger man’s clothes joining the garments strewn along the floor. His head is tilted back and Stiles takes it as an invitation to leave heated brands across the skin of Derek’s throat. 

Looking at the ceiling, jolting with every faint point of contact, Derek realizes he forgot how it feels to not want Stiles. To not feel a boiling, desire-adjacent _something_ that always left him rough around the edges. He feels eons away from the time where looking at Stiles made him so fucking angry that it nearly hurt. Back when he thought it was better to brim over with misplaced anger than be forced to feel everything else. 

He tilts his head down so that they are facing one another, leans them both back until his spine is bowing into the mattress with Stiles above him, obscuring his view of anything else. He wants to catalogue the fucking moles and commit the blush to memory. He grips at Stiles’ forearms, muscle and flesh and bone forming long lines to the dips in the mattress where his hands are bracketing either side of Derek’s ribs. He aims a languid, unhurried thrust upward and feels his mouth part involuntarily at the way Stiles squeezes his eyes shut, exhaling harshly from his nose while his brows furrow. Derek finds himself leaning into Stiles without thinking, tethered on a fucking rope, aching to be closer in ways he cannot grasp. He slides his hands from Stiles’ arms to fit them around his waist, thumbs pressing into bone. He feels like he is on fucking _fire_. He holds Stiles still and rolls upward again, more deliberate this time, and Stiles’ head drops back as Derek’s drops forward, humming high while Derek grits his teeth against the punched out sound that tries to erupt from his chest. 

He folds over to wrap his lips around Stiles’ adam’s apple, he wants to taste the vibrations from the sounds grating through the man’s throat. He sits up, pressing Stiles closer as he drags his mouth up up up, lower lip catching on the tendon all the way over his jaw and to his lips so he can kiss him hot and hard.

Derek uses their position to flip, uses the momentum to put Stiles onto his stomach, push him deep deep into the mattress until the sheets wrinkle up around his silhouette. He keeps Stiles in place with a broad palm splayed in the middle of his back. 

For a moment he just looks. Looks like he has wanted to look for - he takes a deep breath and groans. Just groans and looks and fucking _wants_. Derek isn’t sure how to be with Stiles without ruining everything. He doesn’t think about it. He is letting it be. 

He sucks at the skin pulled over the back of Stiles’ neck, balancing on his forearms. Stiles’ forehead hits the pillows with a soft thud, head bracketed by his arms, hands clasped together. His knuckles flicker white when he bends upward, grinding slow against where Derek is fucking _aching_. He gasps and rocks forward like he has been shocked and Stiles laughs, the sound buried in the feather-down. His laugh dissolves into a choked off moan, the sound smeared low and wet into the pillowcase when Derek clenches his fists and grinds down harder, starting at the apex of Stiles’ thighs and dragging upward until he reaches the base of his spine. He feels wickedly vindicated at the way Stiles goes rigid. 

He bites at the places his lips were kissing, embeds his teeth, trails the tip of his nose across Stiles’ back as he mouths his way down down down. He sucks and scrapes his stubble and takes his time. He blindly slips his fingers under the band of Stiles’ underwear, tugs them down to rest beneath the swell of his ass. Derek eases down the mattress, spreads Stiles open and gives in when he ruts against the sheets. He drags the flat of his tongue slow, so slow, and Stiles tastes like magic. Like the gritty coating on sour candy and the hot-humid air of a summer night. Stiles moans like he is sobbing and raises up, supporting his weight with his arms while his head dips forward, neck curving until Derek can see the topmost knob of his spine jutting out. He can feel his nerve endings igniting, rubbed raw and sparking with the current of a power line. He laves his tongue, every part of himself touching some part of Stiles in a series circuit of whatever the fuck this is. 

Derek doesn’t have anything to liken this with even if he wanted to liken it with something, if he weren’t letting things be - the way the skin of Stiles’ neck and shoulders is flushed red, how his hands grip the sheets in time with the noises flowing from bitten lips, the way he tastes how he smells and looks at Derek like he knows that he is mere seconds from unraveling. 

Derek holds him down, presses Stiles’ hips with his palms so that he can no longer rock back. Stiles trembles, spine quivering like he is pulled tight enough to snap. When he lifts up to balance on his knees, Derek takes the hint; reaching around to tug loose and slow while he licks stripes until Stiles tastes more like Derek than citrus. Derek kisses at the dimples on his back and smooths a burning hand up, stopping between the blades of his shoulders. “You’re okay,” he murmurs. He doesn’t know if he is reassuring Stiles or himself. 

Stiles makes an impatient noise, arching back. “I thought you were going to fuck me, not lay me down and act like we are in love or—” Derek growls, lurches forward and grips Stiles’ jaw so he can kiss him, dirty and biting, because he just wants Stiles to shut the fuck up for once. There has never been a silence that Stiles hasn’t carved out with sharp words, and Derek is fucking tired of being cut. Stiles twists and pushes Derek back by the shoulders. He goes, falling until he meets the sheets and Stiles is looming over him. His eyes go dark as they rove over Derek and he kicks his briefs the rest of the way off. Stiles bites up Derek’s throat, scrapes blunt teeth over his pulse. Derek wants to look his fill, wants to see everything, but he stops when Stiles breathes hot into his ear. “ _Alpha_.”

Derek grits his teeth. “Don’t call me that.”

Stiles grins down at him, mean and wicked. “Someone needs to hold you down until you can’t even speak. I bet you would like that. You always did need someone to give you orders, didn’t you, Alpha.”

“I said don’t fucking call me that,” Derek speaks into the hinge of Stiles’ jaw. “Don’t call me what you used to call him.”

Stiles clicks his tongue, drags his lips along Derek’s cheek until he is talking into Derek’s mouth, until he can taste the words. “Do you ever stop thinking about Peter, Derek?” He kisses him, slow and dirty. “You are a grown man. You’re free.” He kisses Derek again. “And I never called anything but his name, _Alpha_.” 

Derek’s vision bleeds red and Stiles laughs low in his throat as he rubs his palm down, making Derek’s abdomen jerk when his fingers pass through the trail of hair disappearing beneath his waistband. Stiles rubs the heel of his hand across where Derek has already stained the cotton and he lurches forward when shockwaves flood his system. 

Stiles tuts. “Don’t jump before the gunshot has gone off.”

Derek lets his head drop back against the pillows when Stiles fits his mouth over the fabric stretched across his dick. He blinks up at the ceiling and digs his fingers into the sheets until he can’t tell if he has claws or fingernails. Stiles presses the point of his tongue where Derek’s tip is straining and the noise he makes feels like it was forcibly ripped out of him, dredged up by a serrated fishhook that shreds his throat on its way out.

He blinks and they’re each stripped to their skin, Stiles pressed flush against his legs as he swirls circles with his tongue and it _burns_. Derek’s hips jerk upward - chasing the sensation even though he should be running from it - and he sucks a breath in through his teeth. Stiles leans back on his haunches and licks his lips, eyes boring right into Derek’s, who has his neck craned so he can watch. And he does watch, helpless to the way his nerves implode or explode or just stop fucking working in favor of sending shivers across his body when Stiles wraps his lips to ease the ache, presses his tongue to the underside and his cheeks hollow with the suction. All Derek sees is bathed in a swathe of red, he squeezes his eyes shut and it is still coloring his eyelids, like when you close your eyes against the sun. 

When his thighs are shaking, more with the effort he is exerting into not firing off like a hair-trigger than with the tremors of pleasure, he curls forward and pushes at Stiles’ shoulders, a silent plea, order, _demand_ for him to stop. Because Derek needs more time.

“I’ve pictured this,” he admits out loud, letting it slip out. He has willingly revealed more about himself today than he has in the past five years, and his chest aches with it but his shoulders expand with the feeling of freedom, becoming lighter with the release of burden. 

Stiles huffs what could be a laugh or a scoff, the warm puff of his breath making Derek thrust up at the tremor that wracks his body. “Oh, have you.” 

That’s what sets him off, finally pushes him beyond the brink. Stiles takes whatever the fuck he wants, when he wants it, with no care to the means of acquiring it. Derek is tired of holding himself back, repressing his want for fear of becoming the hunger. Just like Peter. _Do you ever stop thinking about Peter._

Derek feels his fangs sink into his bottom lip when he growls, he presses Stiles onto his belly - something deep within himself darkly satisfied at the pliant way he just goes - smoothing one palm beneath him so he can curl the pinpricks of his fingertips into the soft flesh of the spark’s stomach. He blankets Stiles’ body with his own and grinds, slippery-slick with the way he is already dripping. He presses his lips into the space below Stiles’ ear so he can brand his words into the man’s skin. “I am going to fuck you into this mattress,” he promises lowly, feeling high strung and ready to fucking erupt at the way Stiles’ lips pucker when his jaw goes slack. He rolls his hips again and buries his smirk into the side of Stiles’ neck. “I am going to fuck you like I have thought about doing for years and you are going to whine my name like it is the only word you know rather than antagonzing me all the fucking time.”

Stiles has lube on his nightstand - of course he fucking does - Derek reaches for it and grins wildly at the way Stiles’ breath hitches when he pops the cap. He pushes a leg in between both of Stiles’, urging his thighs farther apart so Derek can fill up the space between them, so be can trace circles with his pointer finger, unhurried and purposefully teasing just to prove to Stiles that he is capable of possessing the upper hand, capable of taking charge instead of cowering with his tail between his legs whenever Stiles snaps his fingers. 

He sinks down to the knuckle and Stiles’ spine curves. Derek thinks of the golden ratio. Derek’s hips make little abortive movements every time Stiles keens, itching for relief at the sounds. He pushes his free hand into the small of Stiles’ back to keep him still, cease his squirming. Stiles shifts helplessly under his hold and Derek pushes a second finger, twisting until the spark lurches. He tries to sound more controlled than he feels when he says, “Nothing to say, now?”

He can hear Stiles’ teeth grind together when he grits out, “Have you done something worthy of praise?”

If Stiles says anything else, Derek doesn’t hear it, focused on how the muscles in his forearm ripple in waves as he fucks three fingers in and out of Stiles harder, faster, more deliberately, fingertips pressing for the spot that will white out his vision and stave off his callous demeanor. Each noise Stiles attempts to stifle into the pillow seeps into Derek’s skin, embedding themselves into his brain like fucking barbed wire. 

When Stiles shakes again, Derek crooks his fingers up and leaves them there. “I bet you could come like this, couldn’t you.”

“Do you ever stop fucking _talking_.”

Derek rolls his eyes and fucks into the loose circle of his fist, coating himself in lube. He sinks in, inch by inch, gradually, only moving when he feels Stiles give, when the spark shakes under him with shuddered breaths. He has to clench his eyes shut when Stiles exhales shakily and drops the side of his head to the mattress, it’s too much for Derek to see how his eyes were glossed over, mouth dropped open. 

Derek rubs his palms along the backs of Stiles thighs, feels something lava hot coil in his gut to feel that they’re trembling. He rocks forward, sliding slowly until Stiles makes a frustrated noise and pushes back. Hard. 

The pace shifts, then. Derek drops forward, curls his arms between Stiles’ to wrap his hands around the spark’s wrists, Derek’s knees straddling either side of his thighs while he rolls his hips. Stiles’ head dips, forehead connecting with the mattress, and Derek feels the tendons in the spark’s arms flex under his palms with the way Stiles is clawing at the sheets. 

Stiles lifts up on his arms so he can meet Derek’s thrusts, shoulder blades sharp with how his head is bowed toward the bed. The rhythm picks up, Stiles rocking harder and Derek’s fingers feeling stiff where he has Stiles’ hips gripped firmly to help move him along. When it feels like the position isn’t working, Derek leans backward, the backs of his thighs resting against the backs of his calves. Stiles protests but Derek uses his hold to lever the other man backwards, seating Stiles in his lap and groaning at the sensation. He sits up to get better balance on his knees and fucks upward in earnest, one arm snaking around Stiles’ chest to keep him in place, the other reaching to grip where the spark is blood red and dripping. 

Derek is talking, not quite sure what he is saying with the way his heartbeat is sounding like gunfire in his ears. Stiles grinds back and says, biting, “Jackson never fucking talked this much.”

Derek removes his hand from where it’s striping Stiles, plants it firmly between his shoulders and pushes, bending him forward and pressing his upper half down into the mattress, his other hand holding his hips in place while Derek’s are snapping so hard it stings where their skin makes contact. 

“I already fucking told you,” he bites out, panting as he goes harder, pushes deeper, “ _I’m not Jackson fucking Whittemore_.” 

He reaches under Stiles to curl his fist around his dick, thumb circling the head and dipping into the slit until Stiles hisses and bucks forward instead of backward. Derek is close, teeth grinding together while he cants his hips, arm aching while he tries to get Stiles there first, searching for the right angle. When he hits it, Stiles moans so low that Derek can feel the vibrations of it in every place they are touching. The sparks lips are bitten red and spit-slick when they part, his brow furrowed and eyes squeezed shut as he comes hot over Derek’s fist, across the sheets. Derek keeps his hand moving until Stiles is nearly seizing with the aftershocks, oversensitive, breathing deep and ragged. It takes three more thrusts before Derek curls forward, head against Stiles’ back while his abdomen clenches tight with pleasure. He groans out a long, low _fuck_ , legs shaking from the exertion. 

He waits a moment, pulls out inch by inch until he can collapse onto the space beside Stiles, who is still on his stomach, chest rising and falling while he draws deep breaths. Stiles laughs, then, a nearly hysterical sounding thing if it weren’t so soft and quiet and out of place. He turns his head to Derek, almost smiling in a way that seems just for Stiles and no one else. In on a joke that no one else knows about. He says, “If you forget me.”

Derek blinks. “What?”

Stiles rolls over, head pillowed onto the fold of his arms. “The poem was _If You Forget Me_.” He exhales a sigh. “It’s Pablo Neruda.”

With that, he goes silent, still facing away in what is a clear dismissal. Derek knows how to read between the lines. They aren’t good for each other. Knowing it doesn’t fill the chasm, though. And it definitely doesn’t make it easier to clean himself up, slip his clothes on while Stiles pretends to sleep. 

When Derek leaves the room, he is fucking infuriated with himself. He was supposed to enlist Stiles’ help, see if he could assist in pulling the ropes until Derek can fucking get it together. Stiles has such a way of disorienting him, shifting his trajectory until Derek isn’t sure where he meant to go in the first place. He tugs at his hair and steps into his bathroom. This time, he makes sure the door is locked before getting in the shower. 

  
  


x

  
  


At nearly three in the morning while Derek is trying to fall asleep without help, Stiles comes into his room, uninvited and unbothered. 

“Give me your knuckles,” is all he says. 

“Why?”

He rolls his eyes, like Derek doesn’t have a right to know why Stiles is in his room looking for weapons. Like Derek didn’t fuck him hours ago. He really should be used to it. Should expect it. 

“I’m ready to talk to Deucalion. So get the fuck up and give me your knuckles.”

  
  


x

  
  


Derek dreaded training the days Peter put Stiles on the offense. 

Stiles always went for the kill shot, plotted ways to make it hurt, make it last. Derek supposed he would do the same if he routinely had to have the shit kicked out of him for a grown man’s amusement. Well.

Today Stiles has a pair of brass knuckles. They are glistening and slick, though, burning Derek’s nose with the stench of some wolfsbane concoction. 

_“Wolfsbane slows healing, and it burns like fucking fire,” Laura sits him down and tells him seriously. “Where there’s wolfsbane, there’s hurt. Know when to pick your battles.”_

Derek swallows hard against the very real current of apprehension flowing through his bloodstream. Making way for fear. 

Stiles hits him with a force that should be too big for someone as skinny and young as he is. Anger makes you stronger, Derek would know. When the metal slices Derek’s face, it embeds wolfsbane beneath his skin, slows his healing and leaves him bleeding hot and sluggish. 

For the first time in his life, he catered to injuries that weren’t immediately healing. For the first time _physically,_ at least. He had plenty of gaping wounds. He was experiencing part of what it feels like to be human, as insignificant as it seems. 

If he goes easier on Stiles in training after that, that’s for him to know. Only fucking him. 

  
  


x

  
  


Deucalion sighs through his nose when Derek and Stiles step into the room. 

“Really?” he asks, almost bored with an undercurrent of amusement. “You guys left me here so you could fuck? Where’s the Hale hospitality I’ve heard so much about?”

“Hale hospitality is in the fact that you are still alive,” Derek says flatly, already tired of this. 

Deucalion scrunches his nose. “Is that wolfsbane?”

It is. The silver knuckles on Stiles’ right hand are nearly dripping with it. Deucalion opens his mouth to say something else but Stiles steps forward, cutting him off. “Do you know what a sedative is, Deucalion?” Stiles’ voice has a sharp edge to it, and Derek hears the man’s breath hitch slightly. Derek looks between them, feeling as though he is missing out on something that the two of them are in on. 

“It’s a full body relaxer. A little birdy told me that it could potentially revolutionize the drug trade. What do you think about that?”

Deucalion smiles, but Derek can tell he is uncomfortable. “I think that is an excellent prediction.”

Stiles just hums. Walks in circles around Deucalion before slipping a vial out of his pocket. His eyes snap to Derek. “Would you be a dear and hold his mouth open for me?”

Derek still feels like he is missing something, but he steps forward to obey nonetheless, if for nothing else than to amplify the way Deucalion’s throat just clicked on a nervous swallow. 

Stiles crouches down to get at Deucalion where he is resisting Derek’s hold. “He’s a bit uncooperative, huh? That’s nothing a little paralytic won’t fix.”

Stiles sticks the vial between Deucalion’s teeth and slams his fist into the bottom of the man’s chin, forcing his lips closed, molars crushing the vial and crackling glass into his mouth. He tries to sputter, thrashes to spit it out, but Stiles keeps his hands wrapped firmly around the man’s jaw until he finally slumps forward. 

The spark signals for Derek to step back, and he does. Stiles dusts his palms off, staring at the Alpha across from him. “What interest do you have in Scott McCall?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

Stiles hits him, knuckles splitting skin, and the man hisses through his teeth. “I’m not going to ask again,” Stiles promises. He reaches forward and grips Deucalion by his hair so he can wrench his head upward. The man scowls. “This game is so much bigger than you could know. Everyone is a key player.”

Stiles laughs and hits Deucalion again. “Cut the cryptic bullshit. What use do you have for Scott McCall?”

“Everyone is useful, Stiles. It would do you good to learn that.”

Derek looks away while Stiles paints Deucalion red. 

The Alpha spits, well, as best he can while still paralyzed. He huffs a laugh. “So much fear. So much anger. What do you think really happened at the Hale house, hmm?”

Derek feels himself go still, hears Stiles’ breath catch. 

Deucalion laughs. “It’s so cute, really. That you trust Morrell. Deaton.” He tries to spit again, blood dripping from his mouth. “Nothing is real in the presence of mental magic like that. Those two are on no one’s side but their own. You think Deaton gives a fuck about loyalty?”

Derek senses Stiles’ scent go sour. Apparently Deucalion does, too. “Come on now, Stiles. I thought you knew better than to trust anyone.”

“Deaton serves Peter,” Derek protests.

“Oh, really? And where is Peter now, Derek?”

Stiles looks pale, smells like the beginning traces of panic. Derek takes a deep breath. 

“You think I am the one who got a hold of that McCall kid? Ask yourselves this: who is with him day in and day out? No one knows a person’s routine better than their employer, I’d say.” 

Stiles kicks the chair over and Deucalion smiles as best he can, undeterred. 

“Reality is what you make it. No one died in that house.” He huffs a laugh. “At least, not since the fire.” 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Derek snarls, stepping forward. Stiles holds a hand out to stop him in his tracks. 

“Do you really believe Scott McCall was in that house? Or Miss Reyes? And to think I coveted Peter’s possession of you two.”

Stiles kicks at him. “ _Shut your fucking mouth_.”

Deucalion’s mouth clicks shut. But he is smiling. Fucking smiling like he isn’t getting the shit beat out of him. “No one was in that house.”

“Do you hear that?” Stiles turns to him, voice tight. 

Before Derek can respond, Lydia screams. Screams and screams and screams. 

Derek’s head feels heavy, his eyes slip shut while he grits his teeth. When he opens them, he is in a bedroom. 

He knows these sheets. The pillows. The patterns in the plaster of the ceiling. He has nightmares about this bedroom. 

“I missed you, Der.”

It feels the same. He still feels the exact fucking same. He drags his eyes to the doorway and she is standing there, just like he knew she would be. 

This is not his bedroom. It’s Kate Argent’s. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> premarital sex !! read at your own risk !!
> 
> ummmm nothing really too bad happens in this chapter (in my opinion) other than the torture of deucalion as well as the end mention of kate. 
> 
> idk if it is translated in the fic the way i am intending, but i am trying to showcase stiles and derek as somewhat being opposites. derek feels a lot, to the point of thinking he feels too much. stiles, though, acts like he feels nothing and pushes everything out until he cannot even really recognize his own feelings. i am a slut for this, personally. and that is why it seems like derek wants it more than stiles. because he kind of does. and that is why i wanted to do the smut scene from his perspective, because it is so much more for him entirely. i just wanted to include that little tidbit for anyone who may be wondering why their relationship dynamic is so stilted. 
> 
> that being said, the sex scene in this was so fucking hard to write. like so hard. it took me forever to finish and i literally hate it so much. so i apologize if it sucks, but that is genuinely as good as it gets for me, folks. 
> 
> i have no idea where this plot is going so i guess i will see you guys when i see ya.


	10. interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am the worst. allow me to just say it so you do not have to.
> 
> i had about 700 words of this written weeks ago, just sitting idle in my google docs while i did fuck-all because, honestly, i was not quite sure what i wanted to do with it. but now it is finished. it clocks in at just over 2k, and i will probably realize later that i could have done more with this, but i didn't want to give you too much insight simply because scott, as a character here, is oblivious. so he is not going to know things. just like canon, really dskjhjsdhgjkdh
> 
> so, let me just start by saying i would rather die than up the chapter count on this fic, because if i increase it, i'll just _keep_ increasing it. then, we will find ourselves at, fucking, i dunno, chapter 30 while i continue to pull plot from my ass. so, i am going to take my time. i want to finish this in the next two chapters, which is no small feat with as much shit as i have left for myself to clean up. this means that the chapters will probably be significantly longer, which in turn means they will take significantly longer. i am working on one big au project right now alongside something small for valentines day, so i am going to let this simmer, i think. i want to keep working on this when i have time so i can make sure that i end it off in the place i want it to be instead of obligatorily churning it out. 
> 
> i did too much of this too fast and it burned me out for a second there, so now i am slowing my pace and taking my time. thank you to everyone who actually waits for and reads these updates, i appreciate you all. and every single piece of feedback i have gotten on this fic has genuinely warmed my heart and kept me going. so, just, thank you all for your kind words and constant support. it helps more than you know. truly.
> 
> anywho, enjoy some screentime with scott mccall. because i find pleasure in fucking with everything lmao. not beta read because words aren't real and neither are we (:

**Interlude - Patricide**

“A friend should bear his friend's infirmities[.]”

  
  
  


Scott’s best friend is his dad. 

The man taught him how to ride a bike, even got him the electric blue one he wanted as a surprise for his birthday. He folds his long long long legs beneath himself and builds Lego towers and when Scott’s mom reads bedtime stories, he does all of the funny voices with her. When Scott wakes in the middle of the night, shaking in his pajamas at what he is certain to be a monster - in his closet, in the corner of his room, under his bed - his dad just rubs his tired eyes and checks every spot with an air of authority that will surely scare anything lurking in the night. He’ll flick on Scott’s lamp and sit with him until he finally falls back asleep. 

The teachers at school talk about his parents sometimes. They say things like _they are so young_ and _I couldn’t imagine already having a kindergartener at their age_ but Scott feels like he isn’t supposed to hear it, so he never says anything. His mom goes to school while he goes to school, and she and his dad take turns picking him up. He likes when his dad gets him because sometimes he will tell Scott stories about all the bad guys he caught or drive through McDonald’s and get Scott an oreo mcflurry even though his mom says they are not good for him. 

His dad is his best friend. He sees the other kids in his class with their best friends - he hears when Heather talks about how she went to Gracie’s house for a sleepover, how cute her dog is and how she has a super awesome hot pink lava lamp in her room. He hears Kyle talk about how Jacob’s dad took them to a baseball game, how Jacob has tons of posters and action figures and even a signed baseball bat. He sees how excited the other kids get - how they bounce up and down and turn red-cheeked with wonder as each person shares all of their cool stories. Scott sees how everyone’s friends make each other happy. So, he doesn’t understand how his dad can be his best friend and still make his mom so sad. 

Sometimes he yells at her and he makes her cry. She will step outside through the back door and tilt her head up to the sky, just sit there like that while the clouds float past, while the school bus drives through the neighborhood, while the blue tint around the sun becomes pink and orange and red. Whenever Scott slips out with her, she will sniffle really hard and laugh while she quickly wipes at her cheeks. Scott cries, too. He cried when he fell off of his bike and scraped his knee. He cried when he dropped the carton of milk on his foot when he was trying to pour it by himself like a big kid. He cried when he had an asthma attack at recess, clutching at his chest while he struggled to breathe. When Scott cries it is because things hurt, so he thinks his mom must be doing the same thing. 

Scott blinks up at her, frowning. He hates seeing his mom sad. She is supposed to be happy because she makes him happy. She cuts the crust off of his sandwiches and plays pretend with him and she buys him superhero shirts at the thrift store and watches cartoons with him. He doesn’t want her to be hurt. She doesn’t deserve it. 

So, he tries to give her stuff, too. This time, when he sees her slip outside and his dad stomp off to his office, Scott patters with soft steps to the kitchen, carefully getting the grape jelly from the fridge and the peanut butter from the pantry. He reaches on his tippy-toes to get the bread off its place on the counter and sets to work. He likes a lot of peanut butter on his sandwiches, so he makes sure to put as much as he can for his mom. He is not allowed to use knives, so when he is done he tears the crust off with his fingers, grinning crookedly at the jagged edges because they look funny. 

He steps outside, his mom has her head tilted to the sky, and when he gives her his sandwich, she just hugs him and cries. Scott thinks, then, that you aren’t supposed to hate your best friend. But, before he goes to sleep, he is so upset that it makes the space behind his eyes bubble with heat.

  
  


x

  
  


Stiles Stilinski is the only kid in Mrs. Johnson’s second grade class who is as weird as Scott. He has weird hair and a weird nose and there is a small gap in his front teeth where one of them is growing in. Scott is _delighted_. 

Playing together at recess becomes going to each other’s birthday parties which then becomes staying the night at each other’s house and whispering scary stories in the dark. Scott’s mom likes Stiles’ mom, which makes Scott happy, because his mom needs a best friend. They sit in the living room laughing together while Scott and Stiles play with their action figures and build up Lego towers only to see who can destroy them the coolest. 

Scott has never had the nicest stuff. His dad works a lot and so does his mom, and a lot of his clothes come from bargain bins and his toys are never brand new. Stiles does not mind one bit. He let’s Scott borrow whatever he wants, lends him comic books and graphic tees and records things that he likes so he can watch them when he comes over. Stiles is what Scott imagines having a brother would be like. He loves him like family.

Mrs. Stilinski and the Sheriff treat him like their own kid. The sheriff ruffles his hair and Mrs. Stilinski cuts the crust off his sandwiches, just like his mom. The one thing Scott does not really understand, though, is that the Sheriff never makes Stiles’ mom cry. He does not yell at her or grab at her or corner her against walls. Scott waits for it. When Mrs. Stilinski drops her fork while they eat dinner, Scott holds his breath, but the Sheriff just laughs and scoots away from the table to get her another one. When she washes a pink garment with his white undershirts, staining them baby pink, Scott squeezes his eyes shut, but the Sheriff just kisses her right on the mouth, grinning. Says he was long overdue for new undershirts, anyway. When she spills a glass of orange juice across a stack of case files, Scott is certain that the Sheriff will scream at her, but he just sighs through his nose and tells her it is alright, that he shouldn’t have left his work folders on the table. While Scott lies in his own bed at night, the telltale creak in his ceiling fan reminding him he is home, he wonders if maybe moms are not supposed to cry as much as his does. Maybe dads are not supposed to be as angry as his.

  
  
  


x

  
  


Stiles’ mom is sick. 

The kind of sick that medicine won’t fix. 

Scott can’t go to Stiles’ house anymore, because it is perpetually vacant at this point. Stiles doesn’t come to school as much, so Scott sits by himself at lunch, is the odd one out for group projects, waits all alone to be picked up. The one time Stiles does come over, he looks bad. Like scary bad. He is so skinny and pale, and there is a solemn slant to his mouth that makes his whole face look like it drips downward. He just looks sad. Like grief altered his genome. 

While they eat dinner, Scott’s mom tries really hard to be nice. She asks Stiles about his recent birthday, what he has been reading lately, she stays far far away from the topic of Mrs. Stilinski. He answers these questions perfunctorily, like he is being interrogated. Like he has to answer them or else. 

When Scott’s dad sighs, gets up and pours himself something to drink - an adult drink - Stiles stares at the glass in his hand for a really long time. So long that the entire room has gone uncomfortably quiet, an incarnation of the word _limp_ while everyone’s cutlery scrapes against their plates. Scott’s mom clears her throat, about to speak, when Stiles just says, small, pointing at the glass, “Does that taste good?”

Scott’s dad shrugs, twists his cup and appraises the swirling brown liquid with a tilt to his head. “It’s not for everyone.”

“My dad drinks it a lot. It makes him sleepy.”

No one says anything to that. Scott’s mom takes a deep breath with her eyes shut and then smiles sadly at Stiles. His dad swallows hard and downs what is left in his glass. He does not get a refill for the rest of the night. 

  
  


x

  
  


His dad pushes him down the stairs one week before Mrs. Stilinski dies. 

Scott stands next to his mom under the sycamores, mourning the loss of two parents. While they lower Mrs. Stilinski into the ground, he stares dead ahead, unseeing, bruises aching and pulsing against his skin. He envisions his dad back home, packing his bags into the backseat of his car so he can be long gone, states away before the corpse has gone cold. 

The hydrangeas his mom bought lilt in the kitchen windowsill, never sent. Scott withers right along with them. 

He doesn’t see Stiles or his dad after that.

x

There are a lot of things that are different in his father's absence. 

Dinner doesn't feel the same. The way his mom curls on the couch doesn't look the same. When Scott hears police sirens, _it isn't the same._

This is probably the worst thing Rafael McCall ever did. Not the screaming or the pushing or the drinking. No. The worst thing he ever did was give them a home that he could haunt long after he was gone. 

  
  


x

  
  


Come the third time his mom struggles to pay for his asthma medication, the pharmacist informs them that the balance has been paid. Scott wishes they had sent those hydrangeas.

  
  


x

  
  


Alan Deaton is not who Scott expected him to be. 

Although, Scott supposes, you can morph anyone into a father if you’re desperate enough.

He spends nearly every day his sophomore year at the clinic. He cleans kennels and learns to administer shots, until one day he is a man, an adult with a diploma and no real dreams of anything else. He likes it here. He likes being near his mom and he likes that when he goes to the grocery store, a handful of people always greet him by name. 

The one thing, however, rooting him into place, keeping him blissfully stagnant, is probably Allison Argent. 

Scott was nineteen with nowhere to go and she was passing through with time to kill. It’s funny, how things like that, things that present themselves as coincidence, coalesce into something resembling fate. Or maybe not, Scott has always been a romantic. 

She was new to town, allegedly all alone, and Scott has always been a sucker for pretty eyes. Now, nearing three years later, he cannot imagine a life without her. Another love like theirs. 

Deaton likes her, too. He always invites her in, picks her brain about different things like cobras and wolf packs. Allison is in the animal wheelhouse as well, heavy into field research. She studies botany, too, tends to a small garden behind their apartment. Deaton’s sister, Morrell, likes her just the same, if not more. Often pulls her aside for _girl talk_ , always smiling and laughing. 

What means the most to Scott, though, is that his mom loves her. And Allison loves his mom. It fills something, a hole inside of him, to see three people at his childhood dining table. A vacant space paved over, made new. 

Allison taught him how to make pancakes. How to fold his shirts so they don’t wrinkle, and, in the event that they do, she showed him how to use a steamer. Showed him how to leave messages on window panes, revealed by condensation. She taught him how to laugh when nothing is funny and how to play _I Spy_ on car rides without getting bored or annoyed. How to fold a fitted sheet and what wine tastes best at the French restaurant downtown where he cannot pronounce anything correctly. Where Scott’s dad taught him to love, Allison taught him to heal. 

She is his best friend. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell that i have been listening to a lot of tswift and phoebe bridgers lmao dhjkhgjskddhf
> 
> nothing graphic in this really, just toying around with rafael's canon storyline. so there is some implied child abuse, implied borderline domestic violence, and where stiles is concerned, implied/referenced alcoholism.
> 
> feel free to be my friend on [tumblr](https://iminsatiable.tumblr.com/)


	11. act vii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy fucking shit. ok so. i appear to do a lot of lying. because this is not long, but it did take a significantly long time. so i’m one for two, it seems. 
> 
> honestly, i’m gonna give it to you guys point-blank, i just wanted to be done with this story. which is why i changed the end count and it is done now. so, while i do feel like i tied up _most_ of the loose ends, some of them are cheap shots and some of them are sloppy. so if this feels fast or rushed, that is because it is. sue me. my goal with this story was to surpass 100k, but honestly, i couldn’t do it LMAO
> 
> throughout this process, i have gotten weird, spaced-out bouts of inspiration for this fic. so, maybe one day i will come back in and add on to it / patch up any + all the plot holes. but i doubt it. while it is not necessarily what i wanted / intended it to be, i am still satisfied with it overall. this has definitely been a labor of love, and even though it gave me hell, i think i will miss it. 
> 
> the only warning for this chapter is excessive violence (:
> 
> thank you to everyone who helped me with this and thank you to everyone who gave kudos and commented and supported me while i wrote this. i genuinely appreciate it and i hope this does not disappoint you guys too much 🥺 
> 
> no beta cause i’m just excited to finally be done <3

**Act VII - Prodigal Son**

"[W]ith a monarch’s voice [c]ry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war."

  
  
  


Stiles sets the room on fire.

Derek is staring dead ahead, eyes hazy and unfocused. Stiles pushes at him, growls through his teeth for him to fucking _snap out of it_. But, he doesn’t. And Deucalion laughs. Stiles squats down, supported on his haunches, then splays his palms flat against the floor, igniting them. 

The wood goes up like fucking gasoline, the flames eating away at the surface in seconds. Deucalion abruptly shuts the hell up and Derek...snarls. Makes this agonized, wounded, _tortured_ sound that drags up out of his throat like it was ripped out of him. Then he shifts. 

This is where the fucking problems begin, because Derek shifts and an arrow pierces his front leg instantly. Stiles sucks in a sharp breath, head jerking to the door. Allison fucking Argent. Stiles takes a deep breath, says _I’m sorry_ , and electrocutes Derek. He snakes his hands to grip the scruff around his neck and sends bolts of electricity through his fingers. The ‘wolf’s ears flatten to his head, scared and hurt and not sure what is going on. He hits the floor just in time for Allison’s next arrow to miss his head. Stiles keeps his hands buzzing, quickly using the momentum of Derek slumping downward to grip his upper front legs and drag him halfway across the room, away from the flames. Now it is a fair fight. 

Derek’s body jerks with aftershocks and Stiles ducks to avoid an arrow. He rolls across the floor and manages to grip Allison’s ankle. He electrocutes her and she screams through her teeth, uses a quivering hand to send an arrow through Stiles’ shoulder. He releases her instantly and groans, rips the arrow from his flesh before tracing a rune he knows by heart across his chest, rolling to evade her next shot. He casts a quick glance to Derek, who is staring at the fire with his tail between his legs. Stiles calls, a bit frantically, “ _Derek_ ,” pushing himself from the floor to continue dodging Allison. Damn, the streets were not lying. She is a really fucking good shot. 

Unfortunately, his goddamn Alpha is preoccupied. Stiles is on his own. He has to think. His eyes dart to where the scraps of Derek’s clothing are heaped on the floor. It is so hot, the room sweltering while flames lick up the far wall. Deucalion is freaking the fuck out, begging to be untied. No one likes the thought of burning alive. Serves him right. Stiles’ eyes catch on the holster still attached to Derek’s pants. Allison appears to see it as well. She makes a move, racing to get there first, and Stiles slides across the floor like this is motherfucking baseball or something, throwing himself forward so he can fist a hand in the fabric and tug, pulling it toward him and just out of Allison’s reach. 

As soon as his fingers wrap around the gun, he jerks his arm up and shoots until Allison hits the fucking ground. She isn’t dead, if her screaming is any indication. Stiles kicks her bow away and makes for Derek. The ‘wolf is still trembling, and Stiles sinks his hands into the thick fur, tracing runes until he is sure the other man is okay. 

“Derek, we have to get out of here.”

When he makes no movement, Stiles cups his face in his palms, fingers curled around his snout. He makes to bark, or growl, or bite - but Stiles stares him in the eyes and tries to think of pack, tries to exude the feeling. He tries to think of Derek huffing a laugh at Peter’s one-liners, Boyd dozing off in the car, Isaac making fun of Erica until she tased him and he cried. The rings around Derek’s pupils shine red and Stiles nods once, slightly tilting his neck. He says, “Alpha,” and Derek huffs, pushes to his feet, standing tall and almost regal. He shakes himself out, fur black and billowing like smoke. Then, he makes as though he is going to go to Allison, raises his lip in a noiseless snarl, but Stiles tells him no. And he listens, ears flattening while he chooses to snap his teeth at her instead.

Stiles spares her a glance on his way out the door. “If your fucking dad is here, I am going to make sure you don’t have the arms to ever shoot another goddamn arrow.”

The way her eyes narrow before looking away answers all of his questions. He rolls his jaw. “Of fucking course he is here.” He smiles at her while he snaps his fingers to Derek, indicating for him to step out. “Hope you enjoyed having arms while it lasted, Robin Hood. Try not to burn to death while I’m gone.”

He shuts the door behind him, ignores Deucalion’s pleas and Allison’s groan. He snaps to Derek, who is stepping in tandem beside him, “I want you to fucking rip Chris Argent’s throat from his neck, you hear me?” He knows Derek doesn’t need any persuasion. He has four goddamn tombstones worth of bloodthirst stowed away for the fucking Argents. Four names on The Hunters' hands, worn like trophies. Stiles might look into necromancy just so he can let Derek kill him twice.

They split up. Stiles is under no false assumptions that Derek cannot hold his own. He knows his limits, Stiles is not going to die babysitting a fucking dog. He makes his way to Lydia’s room first, the pathway surprisingly clear. When he gets there, someone else has already made it to her. 

One of the twins has his arm wrapped around her, holding her to his chest while he digs the barrel of his gun into her temple. He clicks his tongue and Stiles sighs, pursing his lips and slackening his posture when he realizes there is really no way for this to end except badly. 

He holds his hands up, palm out. “I don’t want to do this right now.”

The twin scoffs. “As long as you’re conscious, you are not unarmed. So don’t give me that _hands up in surrender_ bullshit.”

Stiles huffs and drops his hands, smacking them loudly against his thighs. Lydia squeezes her eyes shut when the man pushes the gun harder. 

“What do you have to kill her for, then? She didn’t do anything.”

“I think immunity to the Bite is grounds for _something_.” He smirks and grips at Lydia’s chin. “But, she is awfully pretty, isn’t she?”

The twin doesn’t get to elaborate much more on that before Lydia is shrieking and a red dot aligns itself on his forehead, the sound of a suppressor echoing lightly throughout the room as the man goes limp across the bed. Lifeless. For real this time, hopefully. Stiles blinks to the doorway and Isaac is standing there, grinning. Stiles smirks. _Reaper_. 

Stiles’ eyes flit to Lydia. “You need to be somewhere else. Now.” She blinks and makes no move to get up. He snaps his fingers at her. “I said _now_. And cut it out with the fucking screaming, please. Does everyone here want to be killed?”

He takes the gun from the twin’s hand and leaves the room. He doesn’t really care if Lydia leaves or not. She worked for Peter, and Peter is not here.

Isaac is behind him, a silent shadow. Stiles can hear yelling coming from the kitchen. When they reach the end of the hall, he flattens his back against the wall and fixes Isaac with a look. Communicates with him without speaking. Isaac nods and Stiles nods back. He closes his eyes on a deep breath and quickly slips out into the open, firing without giving it much thought. Morrell ducks and Stiles curses under his breath, he blinks and he is in his childhood bedroom. 

“ _Fuck_ ,” he grits out. 

He sees his mom smiling at him. She is speaking but he can’t hear her. He drowns her out. 

“It’s not real,” he mumbles to himself. He says it again. And again. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real. He opens his eyes and he sees Morrell smirking, on the other side of the room, now. 

“Look who got smarter,” she quips. 

“You aren’t making this a fair fight,” he bites out, shooting at her. He misses. He knew he would. 

“What’s the use of magic if you have to fight fair,” she pants, wild-eyed. 

This time he is in the back of his dad’s cruiser listening to him get frustrated with a deputy. He knows when this was. Almost two months after. Stiles idly kicks at the seat in front of him, he can hear the man’s muffled voice over the air conditioner, silenced through the window. “He’s _my_ kid, you got that? I don’t need help raising my kid.”

“Sir, all I am saying is that it would be healthy for him to—”

“You don’t know one thing about my son. Not a damn thing. So, I suggest you get out of my face before you are out of a job.”

Stiles keeps kicking, peering cautiously at his dad when he slips into the driver’s seat, shoulders heaving. He twists to look at Stiles, face weary. “Are you happy?”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He knew either answer was equally as upsetting. He drags the front of his shoe against the metal securing the seat to the floorboard, rubs it back and forth until it squeaks. He shrugs and whispers, “I miss mom.”

His dad sighs. Not frustrated, but conceding. Like he knew that was what was coming. He just says, “Yeah, kiddo. I know.”

The drive home was quiet, bad quiet. When they pulled into the driveway, Stiles unbuckled himself and went straight to his room. Shut his door and turned his music up loud so he didn’t have to hear it when his dad cried. 

“Wake up, Stiles,” he bites out, gripping at his hair. He can hear Morrell laughing. When he comes to again, he shakes himself out. “Stop fucking with me.” He turns and ducks into the dining room to get away, sidestepping overturned chairs so that he can get to the kitchen. 

Deaton has his hands fisted in the shoulders of Boyd’s shirt, the latter convulsing, eyes rolled back. Stiles shoots and Deaton drops him, grinning. Boyd slumps to the ground, but Stiles can see his chest heaving. He says what he has wanted to say. “I thought you worked for Peter.”

Deaton holds his arms out beside him, as though saying _take a look around_. “I don’t see Peter anywhere, Stiles. Do you?”

“Then what about me? What was all that bullshit about how you wanted to save me?”

  
  


x

  
  


“You know,” Deaton says, lighting and snuffing and reigniting the candles around them, “you’re very intelligent, Stiles.”

Stiles pauses where he was using the tips of his fingers to burn his left forearm before healing it over, seeing which runes worked the fastest. Deaton does not seem to mind his casual morbidity. 

He hates when people tell him he is smart. It makes something ache, a wound that still hasn’t scabbed over. Because thinking about the past is dangerous. Thinking about what could be different only hurts him. When he looks around The Den and recognizes that it could have been a dorm - Ivy League, even - he feels sick. Besides, college does not appeal to him the same way it did before. Not with how it turned Jackson Whittemore into a pompous asshole. So, he opts for confident, makes himself sit up straighter and smirk. “I know.”

Deaton says something under his breath and suddenly the small flames he is playing around with turn purple and stretch higher, pushing up nearly two feet. Stiles feels like he is on fire just being next to it. Deaton puts it out and side eyes him. “I wish things were better for you, Stiles. I do. I can’t save you, but you make me wish I could.”

“Save me,” he scoffs. “I don’t need to be saved.”

“This world is not a place for you. You should just be a kid.”

He picks at the invisible lint on his pants, his neck feeling hot. He knows the tips of his ears must be red with how they are throbbing, he wills himself to calm down. He smiles humorlessly down at his legs. “Well, Deat’, it’s cute that you think that. But, I stopped being a kid a long, long time before I met Peter.”

He can feel Deaton staring at the side of his face. Stiles refuses to look back, he doesn’t know if he could keep this up if he has to look Deaton in the eyes.

Eventually, the other man sighs, conceding. Stiles deflates cautiously, no one else around here ever lets him off easy, ever gives him the benefit of the doubt. The man just says quietly, “No one ever really stops being a kid.” 

When he burns himself again, he makes sure to make it hurt. 

  
  


x

  
  


Deaton falters, his mouth twisting. “If I do recall, Stiles, you were always adamant about not needing to be saved.”

Something in him burns having to add Deaton to his list of enemies. It’s his own fault for attaching value to the man, for turning every person who treated him well into someone he thought of as a father. He sniffs. “Yeah. Well.” He doesn’t really have anything to say. 

Stiles crumples to the ground when his leg blooms with blistering pain. He grits a groan out and surveys the damage. A fucking arrow. He squints at it and peers up at the assailant, rolling his eyes when he is met with a smug Chris Argent. He makes a motion to Deaton, who gives a curt nod and strides out toward the living room. 

The man clicks his tongue. “Stiles Stilinski.”

He smiles sweetly at the Hunter. “Kate Argent’s marginally less successful copycat.” 

Chris actually smiles at that, eyes crinkling and everything. God, what a sick bastard. He’s holding a crossbow that looks like it has been jerry-rigged into some form of a medieval torture device. The Argents have always been ones for theatrics, after all. 

He pulls the arrow from his calf with a sickening slick sound, shakily drawing a rune into the skin. Chris keeps the bow pointed at him, but does not shoot. 

He says, “We’re here for Derek.”

Stiles pushes himself up from the ground. “No.”

“No?”

“No. I am not letting another Hale die by Argent hands. Haven’t you guys done enough? Or is there a punch card? Kill every Hale and get a wolfsbane weapon free or…”

Chris hums. “That’s cute.” 

He seems undeterred by Stiles, distant sounds of fighting still echoing through the walls. 

“Fine. I’ll bite. Why do you want Derek?”

Chris picks at the fingernails on his free hand . “I guess you could call it an eye for an eye.”

“An eye for an eye,” Stiles repeats incredulously. He holds up a hand, splaying his fingers out. “Chris, how many fingers am I holding up?” He closes his fist. “How many Hales do you think Kate killed? I’ll give you a hint, it was more than fucking one.”

Chris frowns, eyes hard, and shoots Stiles again. This time in the upper thigh. He hisses and grips at the flesh surrounding it, yanking it out with a snarl. “You’re really starting to piss me off.” 

“The Hales still owe the Argents. I have it in writing.”

Stiles tosses the arrow and it clatters loudly against the floorboards. “What could the Hales possibly owe you?”

“Marriage,” Chris says simply. 

He blinks. Then laughs, nearly hysterical. “All of this for _marriage_?” 

Chris does not budge, does not burst out laughing and claim that this was all one big joke. He says, “Talia Hale was supposed to marry me. Before she ran off and left this life behind for love,” he says _love_ with a mocking tone, like it’s absurd. Stiles knows where he is coming from. 

Stiles takes a step closer, just to see, and Chris takes one back, reloading and realigning the aim of his crossbow. Stiles heaves a sigh. It was worth a shot. 

Stiles throws his hands up. “Fuck. Okay. _I’ll_ marry you, can we do that? How about we do that so you can all fuck off.” 

Chris shoots at him again but this time it misses, more of a warning, a demand to shut up. Stiles heeds it, pursing his lips as he hears Lydia scream again. “It’s symbolic. A Hale ‘wolf marrying an Argent. It is about the unity, not the status.”

“Everything is about status.”

“Not this,” he insists. “These types of binds run deeper than you can comprehend. Are older than you.”

Stiles, quite honestly, is tired of this conversation. He has no interest in whatever the fuck Chris Argent wants. He tries, instead, “What interest do you have in allying with Deucalion?” 

Chris tilts his head, as if hearing something. Or listening for something. Then, he smiles. “I think you will see.”

With that, he unholsters the gun at his hip and Stiles doubles over when the shot pierces his abdomen, vision swimming red. By the time he heals, Chris is already gone.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he screams, pulling the bullet from inside of him and dropping the bloodied metal to the ground. 

He tries to steady his stance and shakes himself out. He quickly crosses to where Boyd is still lying on the ground behind the counter. He traces rune after rune until the other man sits up, groaning. He pats him on the shoulder, “You’re alright,” he promises. Boyd hefts himself up and Stiles looks to make sure he is armed before motioning with his hand. “Stick with me.” 

They walk to the doorway, bracing themselves before stepping out. He can hear yelling in the living room, the sound of furniture breaking. 

Before they can make it across the hall, a shrill shriek sounds and he immediately moves to cover his ears. He can feel the floor shaking, his eyes snap to the doorway he just came from, gun raised. He sees Boyd’s eyes glow in his peripheral. 

Whatever he was expecting to stumble out in front of them, you could have given him a million guesses, and he wouldn’t have gotten it. He hears Boyd inhale sharply behind him.

A kanima. 

It looks at them for a moment, head tilted, eyes darting across each of them. Stiles squints, looking at the shape of its face, the figure of its body. He can see it, then, in the position of its eyes, how its nose curves. 

He lowers his gun, closing his eyes briefly. He sighs, but Boyd beats him to it. 

“Erica.”

Stiles wants to scream. He thinks about doing it, for a moment. Because he doesn’t know how all of this shit can happen to him, how he can be kicked repeatedly while he is down, and then not just. Cease. At some point, the hurt has got to kill him. He’s a dead man walking, these days. 

He plays it over and over again in his head. Being in the Hale house, tied up, how Erica had seemed so sure this was her way out. A part of him, a piece deep down, feels vindicated knowing she didn’t make it. Knowing that she let everyone down and received nothing in return. After all, they all know. Have each been shown time and time again. The only way out is in a casket. This is Erica’s swan song. 

Now he knows why Chris is buddy-buddy with Deucalion. 

He grips the shoulder of Boyd’s shirt, tugging the other man’s helpless gaze to meet his. “That is not Erica, you got that?” He waves the gun, an attempt at levity. “I am not going to kill it if you don’t want me to. But, that isn’t her, Boyd.”

The kanima screeches again and Boyd looks to it, but Stiles tugs on his shirt. “It isn’t her. If we don’t kill it, someone else will.” 

Boyd blinks and his face shifts, he turns from Stiles and drives his fist through the wall, roaring. Stiles knows how that feels, he looks away to grant him some privacy. He knows how fucking terrible it felt when he had to kill it. Boyd takes a few deep breaths and begins walking to the living room, away from the kanima. Stiles readjusts his grip on his gun and nods at nothing, following behind. Boyd says, still looking ahead, “I can’t do it right now.”

“Okay.”

“I can’t.”

“Alright.”

When they step into the living room, it’s chaos. The other twin is fighting with Isaac, both of them beta-shifted and snarling at one another. Kali is swiping at Lydia, who is dodging her and aiming shots that make Kali hiss before they heal over. Derek is shifted back, now, claws tearing into a shrieking Ennis. 

Boyd immediately rushes to help Lydia and Stiles makes his way toward Derek, evading errant shots and blood spatters. 

When he makes it over, he levels his barrel at Ennis’ head and pulls the trigger, the man going still. Lydia grips her head, screaming, and Boyd shoots Kali in her chest, over and over until he can make it to her, clawing through her throat. Lydia is screaming and screaming and Stiles purses his lips. Derek is heaving these huge gulps of air, his eyes blazing. Stiles steps in front of him so they are face to face. He quickly relays what he knows. “I ran into Chris.” Derek pushes Stiles to the side when Isaac and the twin stumble toward them. “This is about marriage. The failed one between Chris and your mother.”

Derek’s eyes snap to him. “What?”

Stiles ducks, pulling Derek with him to avoid a swathe of bullets. “The Argents need a Hale ‘wolf to marry into their gang. It’s a unification thing.”

Derek blinks at him. “There’s not many of us left.” It’s a joke, and Stiles barks a surprised laugh because _really._ There is smoke seeping through the floorboards from the room down the stairs that is still on fire. “Yeah, so you better put your goddamn church shoes on.” 

Derek grins, wolfish and feral in a way that makes Stiles’ heart pick up, and he’s gone, crossing the room to help Isaac. 

When the twin goes down, Lydia’s screeching amps up a register and Stiles just stomps over, tracing a rune that makes her go limp. Quiet. Finally.

They are all panting and when he looks up, Deaton is in the doorway. He steps in, revealing Morrell behind him, then Chris Argent who is dragging a wide-eyed Scott McCall by the arm. Stiles feels his blood run cold. Finally, Allison steps through, soot-stained. She’s wearing black gloves, their purpose clicking into place when the kanima slides through last, looking around absently. 

“What is he doing here,” Stiles demands, jerking his chin to Scott, trying not to appear as scared as he feels. He can still see Scott screaming, the way his body jerked. How he cried. None of it was real. 

Instead of Chris responding, Allison pipes up. “He’s with me.” 

“Like fucking hell he is with you.”

Scott just says, small, “Stiles?”

He pinches the bridge of his nose. Chris raises his hands in a placating gesture and Stiles scoffs. He can go to hell. 

“We just want Derek.”

“Well, here I am.” 

Boyd steps in front of Derek, guarding him. Boyd was always the best at his job. But, their Alpha says, “It’s alright,” before marching forward, making his way to the Argents. 

Chris looks surprised, and Stiles knows he looks the same. He wants to grip Derek by his shoulders and demand _what the fuck are you doing?_ He remains quiet, but rearranges himself so he is poised to strike. 

When Derek makes it over, he insinuates himself between Allison and Scott. He looks over at Chris, calculating. “You need me for the marriage contract.” It’s a question, but he phrases it like a statement, seeking confirmation. 

Chris nods. “A Hale ‘wolf.”

Derek’s eyes go cool at that, evaluative. Stiles wishes he knew what he was fucking thinking. “A Hale ‘wolf,” he repeats. Suddenly, Derek’s eyes flit to Scott and Stiles hears his own throat click. Before he can talk himself out of it, he promises, “I will never forgive you.”

Derek doesn’t even look at him. “I’ve been hated by better men for less.” 

There’s a beat of silence when Derek sinks his teeth into Scott’s shoulder. A surreal, lazy sort of peace. No one is moving, there is no sound. Then, Scott screams, crumpling to the ground, and the coil snaps. Suddenly Deaton is on Isaac, Boyd clutching his head across from Morrell, Derek sidestepping to barely avoid Chris’ arrow as Scott shakes and groans. 

The kanima shrieks and clicks on loud talons toward Stiles. He swears under his breath, he cannot focus on Scott right now. He turns and makes his way through the back doorway, toward the bedrooms.

The kanima is fast where it is following behind him, Allison trailing them. He sprints with sure feet to his room, the wards accepting him readily. They won’t keep them out forever, but it will buy him enough time. He knocks over vials and containers of various herbs, looking for the yellow wolfsbane that Peter paid a pretty penny for.

He pockets the jar, turning to head back before his eyes catch on the dagger on his desk. His eighteenth birthday present. He slips it into his waistband in time for the kanima to slam bodily into his doorway, hissing when it cannot break through. Allison stands a couple of paces back, watching him carefully. 

Stiles swallows. “So, you and Scott, huh?”

She tilts her head. “I love him.”

He laughs, disbelieving. “I didn’t know the Argents could love. You know, I envision you all with the whole tin-man thing.”

Allison does not appear to find this funny. Stiles doesn’t really care, he doesn’t need to be funny. He just needs an opening. 

“I didn’t want to drag him into all of this,” she sounds sincere, eyes wet. 

“No one wants the people they love involved in shit like this,” he replies. “Why do you think I left him behind?”

She frowns, sad. Good, she should be sad. He hopes she feels like shit for roping Scott into something he had no business knowing about. Her posture slackens a bit, and Stiles seizes the opportunity. 

“Have you met Melissa?”

Her lips quirk a little. “Yeah.”

“I bet she still makes the best green bean casserole.”

Allison sniffs, slumping. “She does.”

Stiles fits his fingers around the blade and throws it with as much power as he can exert. It buries itself in Allison’s side and she cries out, doubling over. Stiles has to act quickly. He is on her in seconds. Finally, what he is good at. He fits his hands around her upper arms and sends electricity through his palms. She seizes and he releases her, reaching for the gloves. 

As soon as he peels them off, he sends them up in flames. The kanima screeches and brings webbed hands to its head, digging its talons in. 

Allison shrieks in outrage and as soon as the kanima collapses, he curls his hands around its legs. He keeps his palms electrified, repelling the venom so he can drag it through the threshold where the wards will keep it safe. He didn’t have a choice with Jackson, but maybe, just maybe, he can turn this back into Erica. He owes it to Boyd to try. 

Stiles leaves it there, stepping out and over Allison. “I’m not going to kill you,” he tells her matter-of-factly. “Apparently, Derek makes his own plans now. And we need you.” He crouches down. “However, you fucking shot me. A few times. And it hurt. So…” he draws a rune into her chest and she goes rigid, convulsing and making these tiny gasping noises. He scoops her up from the ground, lazily making his way back to the living room. He is about to call checkmate.

He walks in and the commotion goes silent, save for Scott sobbing. He feels a smirk curl at his lips when Chris’ eyes go hard, locked on Allison, who is shaking in Stiles’ arms.

“Here is what we are going to do,” he addresses them. “You’re all going to fucking stop, or I kill her. Easy peasy.” 

Chris pulls his lips back in a soundless snarl, holding Stiles’ gaze until he determines that he is serious. Finally, he holds a hand out to Morrell and Deaton. “Stop.”

Deaton releases Isaac, who hits the ground groaning. Morrell takes a step away from Boyd, who is mumbling about his sister, these agonized things that make Stiles cringe. 

Derek leans down and fits his hands around Scott’s throat, veins inking black. They sit there, he isn’t sure how long. Morrell and Deaton are whispering to each other, Chris has not looked away from Allison. Boyd is glaring at Morrell and Isaac has incrementally moved closer to Lydia, shielding her. 

Eventually, Scott stops moving, stops crying. His shoulders rise up and down, quick and short. Finally, his eyes snap open and he gasps, irises blazing gold. Derek immediately grips him by the chin. “Submit to me,” he demands. When Scott remains still, Derek snaps, “Submit to me. I am your Alpha.”

Stiles holds his breath until Scott blinks, subtly baring his neck and flashing his eyes. He traces a healing rune over Allison, but does not let her go just yet. Derek gets into Scott’s face, letting his eyes bleed red. He asks, his tone laced with Alpha-authority, “Do you accept the Hales as your pack?”

“Yes.”

Derek orders, then, “Ask Allison to marry you.” 

Scott sputters and Derek shakes him, claws unsheathed at the skin of his neck. “ _Ask her._ ”

Chris balks. “Scott, do not—”

“Allison, will you marry me?”

Stiles pulls his gun, presses the barrel into the side of Allison’s throat. “Say yes.” When she doesn’t move, he pushes it deeper. “Say yes or your brains will decorate the walls.” 

She squeezes her eyes shut. “Yes.”

If a breath of relief were a real, tangible thing, that moment would be it. A unanimous sigh of complete and utter reprieve.

Stiles sets Allison on the ground at the same time Derek deposits Scott at Chris’ feet. “You have a Hale ‘wolf marrying an Argent. We are unified.” He gestures to Morrell and Deaton. “Now call them off.” 

Chris looks angry, outraged. But, a deal is a deal. Loopholes fuck everyone. He snaps, “Stand down,” and the mages step away obediently. 

Derek looks to Deaton. “Put out the fire.” He does, leaning to press his hands to the ground, chanting until the heat goes away. 

Derek then holds his hand out to Chris. “We are allies. I pledge my loyalty to the Argents. I expect you to pay your respects to the Alpha, bind our names.” 

Chris doesn’t take it. He steps around Derek, striding with purpose to Stiles. He comes to a stop, standing across from him. Chris looks him directly in the eye, holding out a hand. “I pledge my loyalty to the Hales, Alpha.” 

Stiles blinks, eyes sliding to Derek, who looks equally as appalled. Realization dawns on Derek’s face and he gives Stiles a nod. Permission. 

He takes Chris’ hand and shakes it. “We accept.”

x

  
  


Stiles does not have much left to his name, these days. Pride is one of the only things he has ever been able to hold onto, to keep for himself. Yet, here he is, giving it up. 

Seeing his house doesn’t hurt any less than it did the last time. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. 

He rolls his shoulders back before delivering a hard knock. He has to know. He will wither away if he doesn’t fucking find out. 

His dad answers the door, all confident posture and bright eyes, before coming to a startled stop. “Stiles.”

“Did you hate me after she died?”

The man stares at him, slack-jawed. 

Stiles looks him in the eye, reiterates, “Did you think I was a monster? Is that why you just,” he waves a hand “gave me away?”

“Of course not, Stiles.” The man staggers forward on uneven feet and steps outside to stand in front of him, shutting the door and leaning back against it, leveling the playing field. 

Stiles hates how badly this hurts. “If you didn't hate me, then why did you send me away?” He fucking hates how his voice cracks, how _weak_ this still makes him. After all these years, this is still the only wound that has ever bled perpetually into his conscience. He hates that there is anything in this world that still has that kind of power over him. 

“Stiles,” his dad scrubs a regretful hand down his face. “I didn’t know anything about magic, about your world,” he takes a breath, “your mother’s world.”

The man wrings his hands and Stiles studies the hair graying at his temples. He's so much older. Stiles is so much older.

“I didn't know how to help you, how to get you off the streets where, every day, I worried that you would be killed by some drug fiend who felt like stirring up trouble.”

Stiles feels his palms crackle. “Bullshit. You couldn’t stand me.”

“I couldn’t stand _her_ ,” his dad snaps. “God, I couldn’t stand her. Okay, Stiles? She was the _love of my life_ and you were, hell, you _are_ my kid. You are my boy.” He runs a trembling hand through his hair. “But, I was so sick. That alcohol was going to kill me if you didn’t go, Stiles. If I couldn’t stop seeing her, then I was going to end up joining her.” 

Stiles looks away, ashamed at the way his vision is swimming. He knows it’s true. He remembers waking up in the middle of the night, slipping into his dad’s room just to make sure he was still breathing, to make sure he wasn’t all alone in this big big world. 

“I thought you were going to come back,” the man says, quiet and shaky. “I didn’t think—“ he takes a watery inhale. “I didn’t know I was going to lose you.” 

Stiles rubs the back of his palm over his mouth, squints hard against the urge to scream, to cry, to let it all out. He sighs and it sounds damp, heavy. “You didn’t lose me,” he says to the tree in the yard. “But,” he swallows, “I don’t forgive you.” 

His dad inhales sharply.

“I might, though,” Stiles concedes. “Maybe one day.” 

“That’s all I can hope for,” the man tells him sincerely. 

Stiles forces his eyes back to him. “All I ever wanted was my dad, you know.”

He purses his lips, eyes sad. “I know.”

Stiles gives him a nod, backing away. “Don’t look for me, okay? I don’t forgive you, yet. But don’t—” he chews his lip, “don’t come around, alright? I will come back when I—” he swipes a hand across his face. “I’ll come back.”

He leaves it at that. He can’t do this right now, but when he can, he’ll be back. Stiles is nothing if not a man of his word. 

  
  
  


x 

  
  


Erica comes back in increments, slowly becoming herself as the days pass. They’ve been staying in one of Peter’s various properties, a sparsely furnished loft. 

Stiles knows he needs to talk with her, needs to say what he needs to say. He needs to tell her that he does not forgive her, either. While she got lucky, received a second chance, he cannot just let it go. What she did, Peter would have killed her for. Stiles likes to think of himself as better than Peter, but he is no hypocrite. 

He drags his eyes away from where Boyd is bent over her on the couch, whispering. His gaze lands on Derek, who is already looking at him. Stiles blinks and Derek ducks his head, lips quirked. 

Before Stiles can say anything, Lydia clicks over to him in her blood red heels. She says, low, “Can we talk?”

“Are we not talking,” he asks, bored. He does not particularly like Lydia. He’s sworn off from lawyers. 

She sneers. “How cute. Outside, please.”

He doesn’t understand the point, they're in a building full of werewolves. But he huffs, rolls his eyes and follows her out. 

Once he slides the loft’s door shut, she gestures to it. “Do your silence spell.”

“My _what_?”

She snaps, impatient, “I don’t want them to hear what I am about to tell you. I enjoy living.”

Stiles smiles unkindly. “I am sorry to burst your bubble, sweetheart. But I am the scariest of them all.” 

She gestures again and he obliges her, tracing symbols in the air until he can feel the energy around them, like they have been encased in a bubble.

“It was me,” she tells him, point blank. 

He raises his eyebrows and she frowns. “I haven’t been completely honest. I know where Peter is.”

Stiles’ hands light up and she holds up her own, palm-out. “He has some serious dirt on me, Stiles. Things that could ruin my life. I had no other choice.”

“What kind of secrets are you keeping, Lydia? Secrets don’t make friends.”

“I have been working with Peter longer than you think. He made me do something for him.”

He waits for more, but she stays quiet. “What kind of _something?_ ”

She sighs, tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “He—” she gives a small laugh, “he’s dead.”

He knows the confusion is all over his face.

“But, he can come back. He - he is tethered to me. He did something and now, when he is ready, I am going to bring him back.”

Honestly, that was not as bad as what he was thinking. He tilts his head. “Peter isn’t the Alpha, if he were to come back, we can handle him. He doesn’t own us anymore.”

Lydia chews her lip. “No one was contaminating your coke.”

That gives him pause. “ _What._ ”

“Peter made it up, he wanted - you know Peter, he loves a spectacle. I think he was pitting you all against each other because he was bored.”

“That sounds like bullshit to me, Lydia.”

“It’s not bullshit, you know how I know? Because my people were handling it.”

“Your people?”

“No one seized one of your cargo containers, no one was targeting The Pack specifically.” She takes a deep breath. “I made Daehler’s papers.” 

It makes sense, though. Peter wanting to disappear when the water got too hot, force everyone else to clean up his messes. It is something he would do, create an elaborate conflict that was never even _real_ just so he could lie dormant, waiting to be resurrected when the fire died down. 

If - _when_ \- Peter comes back, Stiles is going to fucking kill him himself. 

Stiles curls his hands into fists, speaks a few words to break the silencing spell. He thinks of how Jackson is dead without having any real cause to die for, how Erica betrayed them for nothing, how Peter started a gang war for no goddamn reason. “Lydia, you have two seconds to get out of my face before I fucking murder you.”

She adjusts her blazer primly, mouth tightening with a small frown. But, she leaves nonetheless. Stiles just stares straight ahead, trying to mull over everything. Trying to decipher what this means for all of them. He waits until he stops seeing red to step back into the loft. Derek is on him immediately. “What the fuck was that? Why couldn’t I hear you?”

Stiles shoots him a tight-lipped smile. “Girl talk, Derek. Don’t be rude.” 

He is not going to tell Derek, he decides. Things are good how they are, they are all finally reorienting themselves. They have a meeting with Chris coming up, they are going to discuss the marriage contract and maybe set up a treaty, of sorts. Stiles wants their alliance in writing, no loopholes and no exceptions. 

Scott stays with Allison, an arrangement made where he can come and interact with the rest of the pack as needed. But, Scott was never really part of the original equation, so no one is bending over backwards to have him here. But, Stiles can tell, sometimes it irks Derek that Scott isn’t around. It’s a ‘wolf thing, he thinks, missing a piece that instinctually feels as though it should be there. 

But, it’s okay. Things are not perfect, and they probably never will be, but they finally have their grip on something. And that is enough, for now. 

  
  
  


x

  
  


He slips into Derek’s room in the middle of the night. He knows the man will be awake. He always is.

Stiles has one more loose end he needs to tie up. 

Derek is quiet, eyes following Stiles as he makes his way to the bed. He sits at the foot of it, like his mother used to do for him, and stares down at his hands. 

He knows why Derek had to bite Scott. That just because something feels like betrayal doesn’t always mean it is. Sometimes, things that are for the greater good have to hurt. It means they’re working. He can understand that now. 

He takes a deep breath. “I think I loved Jackson.”

Derek shifts. “I know.”

Stiles scrapes his thumb nail across his flannel sleep pants, listening to how it scratches. “I didn’t think I did, then, is the thing. I thought he was insufferable, and I liked that we didn’t really like each other. Because it’s easier that way. You know that.”

He picks at the skin fraying beside his cuticle. “Then, he made me laugh. And he made me feel less alone. And when I killed him, the kanima, I thought I wasn’t going to feel better. I thought that it could never get worse.” 

Slowly, Derek’s hand comes to rest by his leg, fingertips brushing his thigh. A silent declaration: _I am listening._

“So, it might take me awhile to get over him. If that is okay.” He wrings his hands. “I’m not good at this, but I am trying. And maybe—“ he swallows. “I could love you. Probably. I just need time.” 

Derek’s fingers curl into the fabric of his pajama bottoms. “I could love you, too.” Stiles looks over at him and Derek smiles. “Probably.”

Stiles swats at him and Derek wordlessly eases over, pulling the covers back. Stiles hesitates for a moment, but what does he have to lose? He slides into bed beside Derek, pulling the blankets up around himself. 

Slowly, Derek curls around him, wraps his arms across Stiles and pulls them flush together. He hooks his chin over Stiles’ head, tucking him against his chest. “Is this okay?” he breathes into the scant space between them. 

“Yeah,” he whispers back. Because it is.

They’re alright. At least, they are for now. If things aren't okay yet, that is a problem for tomorrow. Because, in this moment, Stiles is just a man in a bed, and Derek is just an immovable force, a reliable constant. Stiles wraps around him and things feel like maybe they can work out. And that is enough. It has to be. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bruh.


End file.
